At the start we carefully took notice of the published breakfast arrangements and some other technical stuff about tyre pressures, but fortunately, in view of the problems the organisers had faced prior to the event no route changes. From the start we made good time to Haven Hill, which was a nice warm up for the hills ahead. There was a queue at Clough Wood, so we took advantage of this for a quick nap. Both this and the following Deeprake were enjoyable climbs, unlike the descent to the start at Litton Slack, where I foolishly went too fast and scared both of us silly – lesson learned! You get a good view of the hill from the approach and we had some good ideas about how to play it after passing the telegraph pole. As it was, just reaching the start was tricky (more like the 5 minute rule?), but we got going well and then ground to a stop after about 15 feet - so much for the plan. It had started raining heavily while we were waiting, whether that actually had any effect I don’t know, but that’s my excuse (I had previously commented favourably on the sunny weather –some people never learn).

After Carlton it was time for an excellent breakfast at the Bull I’th Thorn. For reasons I can’t really understand we had been dropping back steadily all day, and were now running with cars that started 30-40 mins behind us, more of this later.

At Haggside we had our first serious problem, the Golf’s clutch (of unknown vintage) has been suffering from the hammering it gets since the big wheels raised the gear ratio and at the restart I finished with the engine going flat out, clutch fully engaged and wheels not turning, lots of very expensive smoke and a fail. Because of this we approached Bamford Clough with some trepidation, not helped by the steady stream of failures returning through the village. In fact, although we didn’t get much past the parking space half way up, it was a real laugh, full throttle, lots of wheelspin, and that feeling that you’re hanging onto the hill by your fingertips. We even had the bonus of watching Colin Perryman power his way past us as we waited to return. At Great Hucklow, the cheer we got showed that the spirit was there, but unfortunately we stopped perfectly in the restart box. On the exit via the class ‘O’ route I was extremely annoyed to hit the same rock that I hit last year and write off another wheel. Judging by the number of people changing wheels at the end of the section and the state of the rock, we were not alone, does anyone know of a source of suitable explosives?

On to the village hall at Hollingsclough, where the tea and scones were very welcome, although when we left it was starting to get dark and we were even further behind schedule. We couldn’t get up the steep bit at the start of Rakes Head and failed the restart at Excelsior, although it was good to see how much better the car went on this section than last year.

The combination of night and brain fade cost us some time as we got lost on the way to Wigber Low and Moneystones and we arrived very late at the finish, hence were declared as retired in the results. What did we learn? It’s a big but not impossible step up from class ‘O’ (We both feel that the class has real value as an introduction) and the schedule with more sections and distance to cover means you have to really work at it all the time. I’m not sure I stopped at the right place in the restart boxes and the question of tyre pressure was as imponderable as ever. We’re not sure why we seem to loose so much time, the tyre pumps we use are probably a bit slow, but that’s the only thing we can think of.

Did we enjoy ourselves – most definitely. It’s really exciting just to be a part of such of a large event, even as an also ran, it’s a genuinely challenging competition, the people are friendly, the foods good,…. Once again a big thank-you to the organisers; and marshals for standing waiting for us in the very wet conditions and we look forward to next year.

Chris Clarke

 
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