A fairly new innovation I think - the book of stage maps and diagrams
I’d
be willing to place a bet that everyone who rallied in the 70s and 80s, whether
driver or navigator (or like me, both) aspired to take part in the country’s
premier event, the RAC Rally of Great Britain, sponsored for many years by
Lombard Finance and therefore known as the Lombard RAC Rally.
In
more recent times the ‘RAC’ – or Rally of Great Britain – has fallen in line
with the standard format for World Rally Championship (WRC) events – that is to say three days of stages
all done in ‘office hours’, with a night’s sleep in between each day. The events are still tough – but for many
years, which certainly included the 80s – there were long, gruelling sections
where crews had no decent rest for 48 hours or more, and ‘Rally of Great
Britain’ meant England, Scotland and Wales, with some pretty impressive
mileages clocked up, from SW Wales to NE Scotland, and just about everywhere in
between. One recent WRC ‘Rally of Great
Britain’ was dubbed the ‘RAC Rally of a small corner of South Wales…’
The
1986 Event – over 525 km of stages – started from Bath on a November Sunday
morning, following the by-now usual tour of England’s stately homes, with
stages generally described as ‘Mickey Mouse’ to accentuate the contrast with ‘proper’
forest roads; less than a full night in bed (Harrogate) was soon over as we drove
north early Monday morning, tackling over 85 km of stages in the huge Kielder
Forest, then into Scotland with relentless overnight stages (no rest!), before
the Lake District on Tuesday afternoon and finally a welcome overnight bed in
Liverpool.
Not
quite overnight – we were up and away again at 4 am for a full day of forest
stages from one end of Wales to the other, finally finishing in the evening
back where we started, in the city of Bath.
You certainly knew you’d done an endurance event!
But
before I go any further, I need to tell you another true story from the 1986
Circuit of Ireland that Pete Croft reminded me of, after reading the last episode. Chocolate (my driver, John Morley) had one of
those ‘Agency Cards’ – for those of you who aren’t familiar, someone in
business could set up an account with Shell, BP etc, and get an Agency Card,
charging their fuel to the card at each fill-up and then paying by monthly
account. Each time he filled up with
petrol, John would get BP and charge it to the card, but he thought it only
operated in the UK and assumed he couldn’t use it in the Republic of
Ireland. Somewhere near Waterford,
everything was almost empty – the service van, the rally car, and several jerry
cans – so we stopped at a BP filling station. John gave Pete the card, saying he didn’t
think they would accept it and he’d probably have to pay cash. Once everything
was filled up, Pete went to pay and presented the agency card saying “Will you
accept this?” The attendant looked at it
and said “Oh yessir, Oy’ve seen these before, yessir, dat’ll be perfectly
alroyt!” and put it through the system. That
fill-up never appeared on John’s bill.
As I remember it was about £85, and with petrol in 1986 costing about
£0.37p per litre, you can imagine how much that would have been today! (I still
feel a little guilty but in my defence I was an innocent bystander…)
Timo Salonen / Seppo Harjanne
…back
to the 1986 RAC Rally… as usual the entry list was a ‘Who’s Who’ of the 1980s rally
scene, with the top three cars being Timo Salonen, Stig Blomqvist and Markku
Alén and quality entries filling the list. Russell Brookes was at 16 and Pentti
Airikkala only just made the top 30. But
looking through the entry list today, I’m amazed at how many people took part
in that event who I still know – Morton, P Sandham, I Holt, K Skidmore, C Woodward,
J Meadows, D Forrester, J Cressey, K Savage…
Pete
and Mick weren’t available to service so we fell back on John’s earlier crew
(Steve Hargreaves and John Griggs I think - thanks to Jim for the reminder) After the usual
scrutineering and other formalities we were able to enjoy (to a limited extent
only) a night on the town in Bath, where we bumped into Ian Grindrod and Dave
Metcalfe and everything went downhill from there!
The
excitement built as we finally got to set off on ‘the world’s best rally’ and
headed for the Mickey Mouse Sunday stages.
We reached Harrogate without incident and were ready for a fresh start
on Monday morning, where we tackled Harewood Hill (in the grounds of the Hall)
and Hamsterley before arriving at the huge Kielder Forest complex in England’s
top right-hand corner. Kielder is a
seriously frightening place, especially when well over a hundred cars have
preceded you and pulled out rocks – nay, boulders, on to the road. It was a serious disadvantage to the later
runners, and even with the quickest driver in the world, you wouldn’t be able
to run that far down the field and be competitive. But it was a challenge…
Stig Blomqvist / Bruno Berglund
Then
into Scotland after dark, with a stage at Ingliston racing circuit before
heading south through even more forests to Kershope, just south of the border,
and then the Lake District, using forest roads I’ve come to know quite well
since… but with walking boots on. Wythop
has a spectacular ‘fresh air drop’ on one side of the car – luckily the driver’s
this time – I remember looking out and seeing only Bassenthwaite Lake, with
apparently nothing in between; and finally two long stages in Grizedale.
It
was raining now, and we had a long run to another Mickey Mouse stage at Haigh
Hall, near Wigan, before a 20 minute service at the Albert Dock in Liverpool,
then the cars were placed in parc fermé until
the morning. It was vital that we didn’t
waste a second in service if we were to check everything. We only had CB radio still, and all the way
from Grizedale to Haigh Hall I tried to contact the service crew, without
success. We came out of the stage and I
kept trying, and trying. It wasn’t until
we reached the back of a six-car (= 6 minutes) queue to enter service that I
finally made contact.
Thank
God for that! “Where are you?” I
shouted, meaning “tell me exactly where you are parked in the service area so
we don’t waste time looking for you.”
Short pause. “Er, we’ve got a bit
lost…” “Are you in the Albert Dock service?” – I must have sounded a bit
desperate – “Er, no, we’re about to go through the Mersey Tunnel.” Jesus! “NO!!
Whatever you do, DO NOT go through the Mersey Tunnel!” “You don’t understand…”
came the reply. “Yes I do, and if you go through the tunnel you won’t get back
here in time. DO NOT GO THROUGH THE TUNNEL!
Make a ‘U’-turn if you have to!” “No,
you don’t understand – we’re in
Birkenhead, we’re on the way back!!”
They
never got to the Albert Dock in time. I
will be forever in the debt of Steve Lewis from Clitheroe & District Motor
Club, who with his crew had just finished servicing the car they were with, and
set about doing a full check on ours.
Markku Alen / Ilkka Kivimaki
Wednesday’s
early start took us to North Wales and famous stage names like Clocaenog (four
stages), Penmachno (two) and Coed-y-Brenin.
By afternoon we had a longish road section to another service halt at
Rhayader; John needed sleep and asked me
to drive. All was fine, with John fast
asleep, until we were approaching the town.
The volume of spectators’ cars was so great, the queue started a mile
out of town and seemed to be going nowhere fast. Nothing for it. I pulled out and started driving past all the
queuing cars, straddling the double white line.
It wasn’t a wide road, but the oncoming traffic could see what was
happening (all the competitors had to do the same thing) and slowed down
accordingly. Then John woke up. I suppose it would come as a bit of a shock if you wake up and the first thing
that enters your mind is that the person driving your car, with you in it,
has suddenly had a death-wish. “B-b-bloody
hell, what’s going on?!?!” What could I
say? – “Nothing John, just go back to sleep!”
We
finished the rally – still in one piece – late on Wednesday evening, and after
a good night’s sleep attended the closing formalities and presentation of
awards (including to the overall winners, Timo Salonen and Seppo Harjanne) by
HRH Prince Michael of Kent. Sean Lockyear and Graham Horgan won our class, but
we were second, and accordingly were presented with our award by His Royal
Highness. For those of you who haven’t
read Episode 4, here’s what I said…
Prince Michael presented me
and John ‘Chocolate’ Morley with our 2nd in class award on the 1986 Lombard RAC. Now I’m
not one to name-drop… but I met him again at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party
nearly six years ago, and told him of my interest in motorsport and
rallying. His eyes lit up and we would have been nattering for ages if
his equerries hadn’t given him the ‘hurry-up’ after ten minutes!
Probably still got 'his' fingerprints on it!
That
was the last event I did with Chocolate.
I’d bought another car and was keen to start driving on road events
again. I’ll tell you more about that
next time…
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