2009 Bruce Robinson Rally

Well - Finally did it - A proper road rally. I've marshalled on dozens and navigated on a few over the years but had never driven on one - Considering I'd joined my motor club to do them in the first place...the 23 years wait had been long enough.

I'm the driver - I've driven on stage rallies and sprints - I got a 3rd overall in the EMAMC stage rally championship in 2000 on account of my stage prepared Skoda Estelle not breaking down on events, whilst all my fellow class competitors cars fell to bits. I've got pots for navigating on road rallies - Although to be honest, the pots should have been for most bilious navigator. I've even fallen asleep navigating on a Tour of Lincs a long time ago.

The Navigator is Bethan Blythe - The younger daughter of Gerry Blythe, Chairman of Mablethorpe MC, MSA RLO for Lincolnshire and also an MSA Steward. It was perhaps inevitable that Bethan would get the motorsport bug given her dad's enthusiasm for it. Beth came over to Nottingham to study at university so she joined our club.

The car, the Ermintrude Evo 1, is an ex-Skoda Trophy stage rally car which had been lightly restored by us in TBC a couple of years ago - Getting a 3rd in the Skoda OC's "30th anniversary of the Estelle" concours in the process....It's been used since then mostly for classic car runs, 12 cars and the occasional blast round Curborough and has led a fairly pampered life for the last few years.

We've been doing 12 cars as a team for about 18 months now and as we'd decided (at quite short notice) to do Lincs MC&CC's Bruce Robinson Rally, scheduled for the 14/15th February, it was finally time to get on and finish the preparation that had started last year to run as course car on the Huntsman Rally.

Basically - the rest of the trim had to be reinstated - The back seats and some carpeting had been fitted last year but I still needed to do the wheel arches, gear lever tunnel etc. As before, this was done using cheap £2.99/m grey corduroy type carpet from Carpet Right and some double sided tape.
I then fitted an analogue clock out of a Renault Clio where we could both see it on the dashboard. Talking of which, the panel that had replaced the glovebox on the passenger side was repainted in my usual colours - Pink with red spots - and the various switches, lights and trip meters located on this were rearranged to make space for a future electronic digital clock. A cursory spanner check and fiddle about with various bits of wiring and the car was nearly ready.

New Dashboard

Beth, in the meantime, had been working on a new set of maps, highlighting various features where necessary and where the regulations allow. She was also telling people on "Facebook" that she was doing a road rally. I was telling all and sundry that I'd be spending Valentines night with a blonde half my age!

Finally, I cleaned all the mud off the car from the previous 12 car we'd taken Ermintrude on.

We drove from Nottingham to Market Rasen where the event was starting from - We called in to Tesco to use the cashpoint and someone (from LincsLouth MC evidently) came over to tell us that there'd been a good deal of snowfall up in the hills a couple of days previously and had yet to clear.

Now I could start worrying....

Noise test seemed to take forever and I was a bit worried about this as I've had trouble with my stage car in the past, but the car was well under the maximum - helped by the exhaust system being upgraded to a twin box type by us last year.

Next worry was scrutineering - Had I done enough work inside the car to hide its stage rally origins? Apparently so. Scrutineering completed and off to the start where Beth sat down with her sister, Rhiannon, to go through the route. Rhiannon was navigating (Guess that's dad's influence again), as usual, for Mick Smith in his Mk4 Escort. So there was a teeny bit of sibling rivalry to look forward to.

The rest of the evening was spent waiting for the first car to start at midnight - we'd been seeded at 27 - the last of the semi experts. Why not novices? I'd managed a top ten placing on the "Oaks Trophy" - navigating - in 2000. I had to deal with quite a few questions from people who hadn't seen a Skoda Estelle in years. Richard Lumb, one of the luminaries in early TBC history had come out to marshal so we had a bit of a natter, other people were still telling me about all the snow up in the hills. Missed the driver's briefing completely.

The first section has 2 or 3 codeboards, located on grass triangles - and we clean the section. We are leading a road rally, along with everybody else. In fact - the first 5 sections are cleaned. Then we get to the old airfield at Wickenby. This is something else - for want of a better term - a Selectif. Well, that's what they're called on the Lombard Revival.

It was many things,slippery, muddy, snowy, wet; it was a real challenge for the driver, navigator and car and it was inevitable that with the target time set at 4 minutes - most of us would be dropping time on it. We dropped 4 minute plus

Then we're off to do a few more road based sections until we got to the biggest challenge so far. The former RAF bomber base at Ludford.

Keen aviation historians will know of Ludford for 2 things. This was where the majority of the RAF's early Electronic Warfare aircraft of 101 squadron were based. And that it was the highest airfield in Lincolnshire.

As a result - there had been 6 inches of snow dropped on it on the Thursday before the event and it hadn't cleared. Ermintrude has a set of Yokohama gravel/snow tyres fitted but they weren't really helping - In retrospect, I think the tyres were slightly too wide to cut through the snow and slush and we slid and slithered round the the first half of the selectif. Eventually another inevitability appeared - that I was likely to damage the car. It happened halfway through Ludford.

The damage was caused because I'd forgotten a quite important thing about competing in Estelles. That thing being that the front panel has a magnetic attraction towards piles of rubble. The car stepped out of line and ran up a bank on Ludford, just as Beth was preparing her best gurn for the event photographer, bending the NS wing and front panel under the bumper.

More importantly - the off loosened a banjo bolt on the front caliper (And I've lost count how many times that has happened) resulting in fluid loss and 2 miles further on - no brakes. Finished Ludford on the handbrake and fixed/bled the offending corner at the exit. And pulled the damaged wing back into some semblance of the right shape.

Thanks to Dave Wilkinson for the impromptu service lighting (his car headlights) and Richard Lumb for stopping to see if we were all right - Although, as I used to be service crew for him when he did the Skoda Trophy, I guess he probably thought I'd cope.

Car fixed, we cut a couple of controls and started the second half 9 minutes late after refuelling and jamming the NSF indicator back in its alloted place in the wing.

The rest of the night was spent trying desperately not to drop off the end of the time card. One further slushy track across a field had claimed a Morris Marina, off the side of the road - I wasn't having much fun either as although I had some traction, every application of the throttle resulted in the car going sideways. Further runs at Wickenby and Ludford with the inevitable time losses bought us closer to OTL but then we managed to claw a couple of minutes back here and there which meant we finished the last section across several fields (with the obligatory deep dykes) on our very last minute before OTL.

Beth played a blinder, being calm, efficient and much, much quicker than I used to be at realising if she'd made a mistake. Which only happened a couple of times all night. Unlike when I used to navigate....

My thanks to Beth (and the Ermintrude Evo1) for being the more important parts of the team and to all those who helped us along the way.

Our thanks to the organisers and marshals for putting on such a cracking event, given the weather conditions in the fortnight running up to the event. I was particularly impressed with the numbers of couples out marshalling on Valentines night and wonder how the ladies had persuaded their menfolk out for the evening.

And we really enjoyed the competiton too. Despite having what many thought would be the perfect car and tyres for the conditions - I'm no John Haugland so wasn't able to capitalise on these "advantages."