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Blog - 2 Entries.


"DarrenA"
posts: 30
Pendle & Pennine group
joined on Thu 2nd Oct 2008

Essex 12 Car Rally
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Sunday 23rd August was the day of the Club Triumph - Essex 12 car rally. I'd been looking forward to this event for a while. The day dawned bright, and turned into one of the hottest. So we had the best part of the day sat in the oven of a Herald, with a heater we couldn't turn off!


We arrived at the start in Bures with plenty of time to spare, although that was the only time we were going to be early all day. After the remaining cars had arrived, the drivers briefing got underway. Among the topics were advice of a large bump along the route that was likely to remove an exhaust if taken too fast, part of the route which had recently been resurfaced in gravel leaving it extremely slippery and a possible road closure just before the finish. Once this was done the clues to the first 2 sections were handed out and the crews returned to their cars to start plotting the first section.
Plotting section 1 was fairly straightforward with clues in the form of 6/8 figure grid references. A roamer is especially useful here. We worked as a team on this, with one person reading whilst the other plotted. Then we swapped over to double check the route. This undoubtedly added a few minutes to our time and may be something we can improve on.

On completing the section we looked at the clue to the next section. For this we got a clear A4 sheet with some little numbered circles, the first of which had the name of a farm. OK, so we place this over the map with the first circle on the farm and the position of the other circles tells us our route. Well, not quite. We quickly worked out we'd have to rotate the sheet on the map until the circles all fell over roads. This was getting a bit fiddly now... until we spotted the BIG line drawn on the sheet with a gridline number on it! As soon as we lined that up, the rest fell into place. So, after a short time plotting we were back on the road. The on road navigation was fine, apart from one point where we turned up what we thought was the right road only to find it was the longest farm driveway ever! We now realised we were in danger of missing the closing time at the next checkpoint. With a few miles to go we traversed the recently gravelled lanes mentioned at the drivers briefing (very slippery). As I was counting down the distance and time left we could see a tractor ahead.
Things were getting tight now, but it turned off just as we came up behind it, phew! Onto the final main road to the finish of the section and I could tell we would barely make it when we encountered a slow moving van (you don't often see one of those!). With hardly more than a mile to go and less than 2 minutes left we made it past the van. Now we were coming up to the final minute, but around the corner was more slow moving traffic. We had no option but to follow them to the car park that marked the finish of the stage. With only a few seconds to go we turned into the car park - made it!
For the second half of the event the clues got a bit trickier, Section 3 gave us a spot height to drive to. Along this part of the route we had to get the phone number off the side of a building. This was then used to calculate the grid reference of the section finish. To navigate from the spot height to the section finish we had to find 3 spot heights that added up to 84! Unfortunately we'd not had chance to mark up the map prior to the event so finding the spot heights wasn't easy but luckily (and it was luck) we quickly found the 3 we needed. Once the route was plotted it was back on the road and onto the end of the section.
There was then a short neutral stage where we had a tulip diagram to get to the start of the final section. The clues for the final section were a set of gridlines to cross, then a herringbone. Pretty straightforward, and with time moving on we dispensed with our usual cross-checking, plotted the route and set off. Time was starting to run away again and encounters with slow traffic, pedestrians and cyclists all meant taking extra care and an appropriate reduction in speed which started to add up to a significant delay. It still looked achievable though and we finally pulled into the pub at the finish to be greeted by a huge Club Triumph marquee with a couple of minutes to spare.
Now we could get down to the important part of the day, lunch! We were definitely ready for it, and it was really excellent.

Once the end of the event had been declared the results were announced. There were 2 classes, Novice and Expert, with us entered in the Novice class. The full results can be found on the Club Triumph website. As for our performance, we somehow managed to come first in class with 3 fails! When the overall results were announced, we'd come first overall as well. A really excellent end to the day.
 posted Wed 26th Aug 2009
"Ellis"
posts: 1471
Website Administrator
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North London & Herts group
joined on Sat 12th Jan 2002

Bedford CC Mini rallies - related pics
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A piccie of the car once the additional lighting had been mounted...


A piccie taken before the April rally (also present Tim Bancroft's Grey Mk.I 2.5Pi and Dale Barker's Herald 1200 conv.)

 posted Mon 31st Jul 2006



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