The last blog was after the Saltire Classic rally and our next event was the Granite City. It’s been well documented what happened
there and I won’t lie, it knocked the wind right
out of our sails and made getting in the car again very hard.
We were invited to perform course car duties
at the Highland Car Club-run Stravaigers Lodge Gravel Sprint at Fort Augustus a
month later and it did the world of good for one of us to get back in the car so
that when the time came for a proper rally I could give Katherine a bit of
confidence. A few months passed and with the Merrick Stages looming we realised we needed to get out together in the car on our own and see if we were ok driving non- competitively. It was around this time we received a call from Quintin Milne et al about tagging along on a test day. After a bit of persuasion we agreed and turned up at the unofficial Speyside shake down and prepared for our runs round by each having a recce with Andy Horne in the DAM 4100. It possibly wasn’t the best idea as it put the fear of god into me and Katherine appeared back with a look that can only be described as terror? Enjoyment? No, terroyment. Our turn to drive came and we set off, had a rather large moment and returned to the start. It had been radioed back to the start and everyone knew so they made us go straight back in and after that we got faster and faster but more importantly, we got us some confidence.
We were to run as car 000 on the Speyside
Stages, our car club’s award-winning event.
Although we were only to do the Cooper Park city centre stage and one of
the gravel ones, Rosarie, we were more than happy with this as it gave us
another chance to get out non-competitively with spectators around. We didn’t have notes so we had a bit of a
laugh on the Cooper Park stage with Katherine reading me passages from 50 Shades
of Grey instead. That stage needs to be
longer as it was such good fun to drive! We then went round with our buckets
collecting change and made a lot for the charities before heading out to
Rosarie to have a laugh with the assembled officials who couldn’t figure out
why 000 was there already. What a
fantastic stage that was, by the end of it we wanted to do more again which was
testament to how much confidence it had given us. A massive thanks to the 63 Car Club for
allowing us the opportunity. We’ll be
back!So then it was on to our first event proper since the Granite, the real thing, the Merrick. Unfortunately due to my other half being at work, there was no access to a tow or service crew so I had to drive the rally car from Aberdeen to Newton Stewart. A journey I can only describe as long. The service crew of driver Dave Wright from Bentham offered to help us which was very kind of them, although, with the lack of spares and the drive home after, if anything happened it would be game over for us.
We can only describe our day as
awesome. The elation at finishing our
first event was unbelievable (although if you’ve seen the YouTube in car
footage you may have some idea, sorry for the language). We hung around at the prize giving as we weren’t
heading home until the following day so wanted to support the event that had
supported us. Tucked in at the back we
thought we were safe enjoying everyone else collect their awards. It wasn’t until the “man of the rally” award
was mentioned and they said it would be changed to “women” that we suddenly
twigged… our mentality at driving the car from the North of Scotland, competing
and then driving it home again hadn’t gone unnoticed. So we gratefully received an award previously
held by such greats as Colin McRae! A huge thank you to the Marshall family for
all their generosity in helping us also.We next went to perform “duties” at the Knockhill Festival of Speed. I say “duties” as we basically had two days fun driving the circuit’s special stage with the Saltire Rally Club boys and girls and raising lots of charity awareness and quite a bit of funds for which we were extremely grateful.
Our last official event of the year, and where
we had a final push at fundraising, was the McRae Stages organised by Coltness
Car Club. We managed to sell a fair few
raffle tickets by setting up in the signing on hall before the event after
collecting some brilliant prizes from various sources.
The rally itself was again fantastic.
Errochty stood out for me as a fast and flowing stage, although there was one
scary point on ss5 that obviously had some form of rally car magnet turned on
as it was claiming cars by the dozen and causing carnage. We made it past though, after a marshal
slowed us down and we received ample warning from the start crews. Unfortunately the rally car suffered damage
on the penultimate stage after a rock kinked the fuel line and we went into the
final stage feeling like we could go quicker if we ran. And that’s saying something from the car with
the lowest BHP on every event it does!
We coasted to the end and celebrated by heading across to Mull. Again, a huge thanks to Coltness Car Club for
all they did for us.We ended the year having raised £2,500 for our chosen charities. Thank you to EVERYONE who helped us and supported us. The incident at the start of the year really knocked us more than we can say, I think we could have raised more but we had to take things as they came for a while. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and you can’t change it, all you can do is learn and move on and be thankful for the positive things that arose from it.
Speaking of positive things, the next
installment will be about this year and the new things we’re doing…stay tuned!
Rachel
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