One year on Mull, David
Calvert broke a cam belt early in the week whilst reccying in the rally car (an
Escort), and bent all eight valves. None
were to be had anywhere on the island or the nearby mainland, but he managed to arrange for
someone who was coming up on Thursday to pick up a set from Thomas Motors at
Blackpool and bring them for him.
So
far so good… but when the Good Samaritan arrived with the valves, there were
eight alright – but five were inlet valves and only three were exhaust. Lesser mortals might have thrown in the
towel, but Ribble Valley farmers are made of sterner stuff. Dave found a lathe in Tobermory and turned down
the inlet valve (thankfully inlets are larger than exhausts) to make a near-perfect
set, which were then fitted, allowing Dave not only to compete but finish the
event.
I
was always trying to drive faster, but around this point my times seemed to
plateau, and however hard I tried, I didn’t seem to be going any quicker. So I decided to try and drive smoother instead. And almost immediately my times started to
come down again.
Joe
Riding and I did one or two more rallies together. On the last one we had a
good first half – not only leading at petrol by a good two minutes or more, but
this was after being badly baulked on the Haylotts white east of Lancaster. I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to
inflicting physical damage on another human being – everyone who’s ever rallied
knows the unwritten rule that if someone catches you, you pull over as soon as
you can and let them past. Not this
fella. Although passing wasn’t easy,
there were several places where he could have pulled over, but in fact he
seemed to be deliberately holding me up.
As we arrived at the control I jumped out and just managed to control my
temper, giving this idiot a piece of my mind rather than a black eye!
Petrol
was at the garage just west of Kirkby Lonsdale on the A65. As I filled up, Joe went off to look at the
results. He came back looking perturbed. “What’s up?” “We’re in the lead.”
“Great!” “By over two minutes” “Excellent! – so why the puzzled face?” “I
didn’t think we were going quick enough.”
That made me really happy!
But
not for long. A few miles into the
second half there was a long straight with a crest after half a mile. Joe called out a 45-right over the crest and
immediate square left after. I thought I
could remember this bit of road, and also thought I knew better – that
the bends were much sharper on the map than on the road. I was completely wrong. We actually made it around the 45-right. But we were still going much, much too
quickly to get around the square left, and slammed into the bank on the
outside. Ouch!
I
couldn’t see properly – I've always been very short-sighted and the impact had caused my glasses to fly off. I thought they must be outside, but then
realised all the glass was intact. But
they were nowhere to be found, and I daredn’t move too far in case I broke
them. A frantic search ensued, which
seemed to take for ages, before the offending spectacles were found… neatly
folded up in the passenger door pocket!
Soon,
I left Black Horse Agencies to step out on my own in business. Eventually quite good for me I guess, but not
good for rallying. I learnt that when
you have your own business to develop, there isn't much time left for rallying, and the
result was really an end to my ‘leisure career’ of rallying – apart from a few
internationals still, and of course, apart from Mull, for a few years.
The
problem with driving on only one event every twelve months is that – when you’re
still in your late thirties and early forties - you find that each year you
drive faster. But you’re no longer ‘in
the groove’, and when something goes wrong, not only does it seem to happen faster, but
you’re not so quick at sorting it out either!
Luckily,
Hellifield Garage came somewhat to the rescue by not only offering to prepare
and maintain the car for Mull, but eventually they let me garage it there
too. This all happened at the same time the RAC banned Targa timing and effectively put an end to the fast and furious road rallying as
we had come to know it.
Back
on Mull, Brian Molyneux and his team were moving mountains to convert the Tour
of Mull to a closed road stage rally. At
the time this was a completely outrageous idea:
even an Act of Parliament was required, no mean feat. And because of the idiosyncrasies of our
parliamentary system it almost didn’t make it.
The
year was 1988 – after road rallies were ‘banned’ and before the Act was passed
– that the infamous ‘Not the Tour of Mull’ took place. The weather was horrendous, with rain of
biblical proportions, whilst the organisers had prepared a completely off-road
event with several new and unused stages.
The attrition rate was phenomenal, including me and Dad – we wrecked the
suspension on some of the roughest roads I’d ever driven on. The Glenforsa stage became a rally car
graveyard. Almost half the cars that started reached the finish. But there was the same
fellowship, and everyone looked forward to the following year.
There
was enormous anticipation for the first closed road event, but we had to wait. The Act of Parliament arrived too late for 1989, so the first closed-road tarmac stage event took place in 1990. The car was ready but with virtually no
practice for two years, I decided I would have to drive carefully just to get
back in the swing of things. In 1991 I decided to use the same tactics and no one
was more surprised than me when we finished 6th overall, one place ahead of the next year's winners and another father and son team, Mark and Tony Wagstaff.
The
following year was another retirement, for the by now ‘traditional’ reason of
braking too late. Soon after Torloisk,
heading towards Calgary, is the old Kilninian School House, preceded by a
square right. Everything was going
according to plan, but I hadn’t noticed the water running along the side of the
road, and as I hit the brakes the front locked up. Instinctively now, I lifted my foot off the
brake pedal for a split second, then hit them again, with the same result. All in little more than a second or two, I
slowed down with cadence braking – but not enough. I turned into the square right carrying too
much speed, couldn’t help running wide (and on most Mull roads there isn’t room
to run wide!) so off I went, down the slope, rolling once to end the right way
up at the bottom.
Dad
calmly got his flask, sandwiches, oh! and the OK board, and we spectated until
everyone had gone through. Several
competitors mentioned to the marshals at the stage finish that they’d “seen Roy
at the side of the road with his flask and OK board” but they’d no idea where
our car was, as it was completely out of sight.
The
following day we went to recover it. I wondered
why the driver’s side rear quarter-window was broken, retraced the car’s steps
and realised that a decent-sized boulder in the grass had gone through it as we
rolled. I remember thinking we were
lucky that it hadn’t gone through the driver’s window…
I'll tell you what happened - in perhaps the last episode - next week.
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