Skoda Rally Blog

Back in the day, Friday night on the Sunseeker meant driving through Bournemouth Gardens.  It was an iconic event, and probably a major contributor to me wanting to start rallying; as well as the forests, there was this totally out-of-place drive through a town centre gardens.  Not any town centre, but my town centre.

However, things have changed – for the last few years the start has been a ceremonial one on Poole Quay, and tonight it was time for that.  After a last minute change of plan I arranged to meet Paul in the car park before the CS1 control, one of the three on tonight’s start, and in the car park all the cars were ready to go:

In impressive company.

Once Paul had got suited up and ready to go, it was time to be off, and head to the Quay.  We booked in and parked the car, once people had got out the way (mostly people who were supposed to be helping us park!).  Said a quick hello to Gary Hayter who’s looking after the Quay this year, and said hello to a few familiar faces.  Paul’s wife Clair was down with their kids Miles and Evie, and we wondered off down the road to the pointy end of things, where all the proper rally crews were, with the BRC and historic crews all in wonderful shiny cars, and all making positive noises about the stages condition when interviewed, which is a good sign for tomorrow.

What is not a good sign for tomorrow is the car – it appears that it has a water leak;  it has been fine up to now, but the header tank was empty when I got back from scrutineering which isn’t good.  I refilled it before leaving for the start, and it was on my mind all the time we were there.

We were down at the Quay for an hour or so when we went back to the car, and found Tammie and the kids there, by the car, so we said our hellos and then it was time to queue up and get going.

In the queue on the quay.

As I moved off, the car made a new noise, which I realised later was the diff freeing up – I’d forgotten that it takes time to bed in and then will get a bit noisier, so that’s OK, but it took a while to realise it!  Time went into fast-forward at this point, although during that time I bagged a ride as a navigator on the Tempest on November 2nd, so that’s a bonus.  A quick interview before the podium gave me a chance to make my excuses before tomorrow, and tell the world that I thought the head gasket was on the way out, and then off we went, once the Mayor had taken his flag off the windscreen (and me and Paul joked about running everyone over who was stood in the way!).

The view from inside.

I dropped Paul off to get a ride back home with Clair, and came home – the car behaved itself all the way which was nice, temperatures looked spot on, and the water level seemed OK, so hopefully it was just a level issue, rather than anything else, but I’m really not confident.

Anyway, tomorrow is tomorrow.  It’s a late start (we are due out at 12:29pm!) so we’ll take it as it comes.  It’s been a loooong time since I’ve done this, and it really should be about having fun, shouldn’t it?  Let’s see how far we get.