I know it’s a sign of getting older that you look back with rose tinted glasses, but I’m sure we used to have four distinct seasons. This year we seem to have gone from a very long winter straight to a very hot summer. However on the end of May bank holiday Monday it didn’t know what season it was although it did seem to rain every time we got near to the stage start.

The preparations were all on schedule until the Wednesday before the event when Andy Kilby phoned to tell me that he had severely injured his neck doing some rather adventurous DIY (you’d think he’d know better at his age wouldn’t you) and thought that a day in the Golf around Millbrook was probably not the wisest move. This left me with a bit of a panic to find a replacement and resulted in a number of phone calls to Liz and Mike Jordan where we didn’t actually talk to each other but just left messages.

On Saturday afternoon Liz and Mike came around to drop off Liz’s overalls and helmet and have a quick seat fitting. The only real problem was the length of her legs but Mike’s suggestion of nailing a couple of blocks of wood to her boots was not adopted.

I had an easy run up to Milton Keynes on the Sunday for scrutineering and Liz and Mike joined me at the hotel later in the evening as they had a family commitment earlier in the day.

Despite staying locally we had an early start and had to be noise checked and get Liz signed on before the 07:45am familiarisation run through Stage one. The notes we made through the stage formed the basis for the rest of the day. I should point out this was the first time Liz and I had sat in a car together and whilst we are both used to pace notes, Liz’s regular driver uses a different system, so it was a bit like both being fluent in a language but not the same one! This meant we were both going to be very careful through the stages.

Stage one was a good steady run but Stage two was wet which meant we dropped to 7 seconds. Stages 3 and 4 included the hairpin where we broke the CV joint last year, albeit in the other direction. Once we had been through SS3 the confidence level was growing and the car was running really well and performing excellently on the numerous yumps around the Millbrook hill circuit, plus we were both really enjoying ourselves. By the end of the last stage we both coming back in with broad grins.

I have to thank Mike and Darren Barden for servicing for us, although I’m glad to say their biggest job of the day was to hang on to the eezy-up when a really windy front came through the service area at the end of the day.

I’m happy to report that Andy is on the mend and we hope our next outing is on the Jim Clark Reivers Rally in Scotland in July.