Drifting nicely - apologies for the poor photographs!
June arrived, and Valerie was expecting to give birth to our #2 on the 18th. Which just happened to be the same date at the Cambrian News Rally which started – I think – in Aberystwyth. With impeccable timing, the Eagle Rally would start from nearby Newtown, Powys, only two weeks later. I explained to Val that I may as well enter, because babies NEVER arrive on the day they’re due. Do they? And fortunately child #2 – which, despite the fact that neither scans nor gender predictions were generally available in 1983, was definitely going to be a boy – remained firmly in utero come Saturday, and so off we set with Peter and Mick.
We
were going quite well and probably heading for a finish just inside the top ten
when… well, the weekend before had been very wet – wet enough to make a
river down some farmer’s access track and cover the road in gravel; but the rest of the week had been dry and
warm. John and I were catching the car
in front – we were only about 10 seconds behind him; he went through the gravel and kicked up a
huge thick plume of dust, which I entered, couldn’t see a damn thing, and as
the road went left, I went straight on.
Up a slight bank to the point where the car simply toppled sideways and over
on to its roof.
My
third roll, first as a driver, and I hadn’t realised how experienced John was
at exiting an inverted motor car. My
first thought was “Tell him not to unbuckle his seat belt before supporting his
weight, or he’ll bang his head” – I turned towards him to speak – only to see
the soles of his trainers, the last things to go through the open side
window. John certainly knew how to make
a rapid escape!
End
of rally. Still no mobile phones, so
after we got the car on the trailer, and (it was almost the longest day of the
year) in morning daylight, we set off back home, looking for one of those red
things – yes, a phone box. I rang Val
soon after 6 am to say we were on our way home. “Everything alright?” “Well, we’ve
had a slight accident..” “How bad is it?” “The windscreen’s broken. See you soon x.”
At
least Val was still pregnant when I got home.
Pete and Mick said that they would take the car and have it repaired and
ready for the Eagle in two weeks’ time.
In the meantime, they said, I was under strict instructions to forget
about rallying and look after Val and the new baby, whenever it decided to
arrive. It didn’t want to (it was definitely
a boy) so on the following Thursday morning Val was admitted to Blackburn Royal
to be induced. Still the baby was
reluctant to enter the world, until at 4 am on Friday, after I’d been kicked
out of the delivery room (“We need to do an inspection”) and then scolded for
falling asleep, Catherine Anne Honeywell was born. She’d just have to get used
to blue wallpaper…
They
used to keep mums and babies in hospital for a lot longer back then. After a couple of days at Blackburn, and another
three or four at Bramley Meade, mum came home with new daughter…
and
I went back to Wales to do the Eagle Rally.
I hadn’t seen the car for two weeks.
It arrived on the trailer bang on time – with a furniture caster
fastened to each corner of the roof.
Pete and Mick refused to let them be removed until after scrutineering.
We
were getting the hang of those tight Welsh lanes, finishing just inside the top
ten I think. One of the great joys of
rallying was the brakes set-up – discs on the back, twin master-cylinders in a
pedal box, attached by a threaded bar so you could alter the balance between
front and rear, and the hydraulic pipes run inside the car, partly for
protection and partly so that you could also have an hydraulic handbrake,
operating another master cylinder in series.
Pull the handbrake and the rear wheels lock, at virtually any speed.
Erm, yes officer, I am approaching a hairpin right..!
This
is especially useful in Wales where the roads can be very narrow and many junctions meet at ridiculously acute
angles, where it is physically impossible to drive the junction. Once you master the art of throwing the car
in, dipping the clutch, pulling the handbrake, getting half way round and then
letting the clutch out in first gear with lots of revs to maintain the slide… there
are very few feelings quite as satisfying.
It was also necessary to STOP at T-junctions with a Give Way sign. Stopping with both front wheels at the line
meant setting off and turning at the same time, and you don’t get the power
down too well. A number of drivers,
including me, had (almost) mastered the art of handbraking the car on to the
line, pointing in the direction you wanted to leave – in a much straighter
line, with better acceleration. But this
was to be our downfall later in the year…
We were
somewhere in the teens in the championship and would now have to miss a couple
of rounds (no money) but there were still the R L Brown (Lake District), Mull,
Bolton Midnight (on our patch) and that absolute classic, the Cilwendeg
(deepest SW Wales) to go. And we were
improving all the time…
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