1969 MGC     (click on the pictures for a larger version)

What follows is Paul's account of his experiences on this rally driving his 3 litre Austin Healey with Paul Grogan "the Yorkshire Gorilla" as mechanic and navigator. I was in an MGC with Vince Fairclough and we had mixed fortunes as Paul's account will outline. The 2 Pauls, ourselves and three other crews were also in a team "The Peking Raiders". As usual this account is up to Paul's excellent standards and well worth reading!

Arctic Circle and Midnight Sun

Entering an event that has never been run before is always a bit of a gamble. Entering an event that has never been run before organised by people who have never organised a rally before is even more of a gamble. This in itself is risky enough for a 300-km week end affair, but might it not be a sign of serious gambling addiction to enter a 7500 km event organised by virgin rally organiser Bart Rietbergen? Do the words “too”, “ambitious”, “massive” and “disaster” coming together in the same sentence seem to you a serious possibility?

Well to us it did and it didn’t. In simple terms: yes, it was a bit of a gamble… but… if someone could pull it off then Mijnher Bart “Simpson” Rietbergen would be the one. Did we get it wrong?… Did we walk out of the casino at dawn ruined and on the verge of suicide... or did we break the bloody bank? Just read on and make your own mind up…!

Saturday 10th June – Apeldoorn, Holland.  It’s my wife’s birthday today… and I am away playing boy racers with my little chums. In the run up to my departure, the grovelling has been suitably done, the flowers have been organised and promises to make it up to her duly made. Bloody good sport, that’s what she is my Elaine. A bloody good sport indeed!

The scrutineering is passed with flying colours and the signing on done with a minimal amount of queuing. A rummage in the innards of one of the course cars produces a set of spare rally plates (promptly doctored by Yours Truly) to replace our own set which “had been put in a safe place”. So safe in fact that we completely forgot about the damned things and left them in Blighty.

This being already our third booboo on this event, rally lore and tradition say that we should be in for a relatively clear run. “Third?” I hear you ask, “What were the other two then?” Well, uno was not noticing in time the expiry of SFF 176’s green card (fax copy received prior to departure, original to be collected in Finland) and, dos was not being able to find the car’s FIVA passport despite ransacking the family abode till 3:00 am (certified fax copy received (twice) at the hotel in Apeldoorn – Thanks Mike, thanks Tony!)

Lovey dovey phone call home. Quick bite to eat then beddybyes.

Monday 12th June – Potsdam, Germany. After yesterday’s grand send off from the Dutch Royal Palace Het Loo, this morning’s matters are more subdued. It’s basically get out of here on your own time but just make sure that you make the first control of the day on your scheduled time. Paul and I decide that it would be criminal not to have a photo of SFF by the Brandenburg Gates and decide to drive through the heart of Berlin.

Traffic is fluid, map is clear and we find the awesome structure in no time. To the great surprise and dismay of the local traffic, I drive straight across the T-junction and over to the gate. As I slither out of the car, a torrent of verbal abuse deluges over me. Franz, Fritz, Hermann, Walter – or whatever his name is – tells me in no uncertain terms to eff off and to take my car with me. His rage is absolutely incredible. We are breaking the law and showing no shame about it… How can we live with ourselves?… How dare we desecrate the “No entry” sign with our presence? Two or three of his cohorts are standing a little way away, silently disapproving of us. He stands between the camera and the car, calls over a less than enthusiastic police officer, gets even more incensed when the policeman shows no interest what so ever in us.

Paul is choking with laughter in the car. I am ensuring renewed hysteria from our duty Berliner with allegations linking his past to the Stasi and the darker side of the DDR regime. We scamper eventually, leaving him haggard, voiceless and beaten as three more rally cars drive up to the gates for their photos.

(It is only much later that we find out that we completely messed up a film shoot of a documentary on the Brandenburg Gate by the German television. Franz was not Joe Bloggs Berliner trying to do a citizen’s arrest of road hoggish tourists but the location manager of a 20 strong TV crew… Oooooops!… Sorry, Franz. Next time try talking nicely to us instead of screaming and then see what happens).

The rest of the day is mainly uneventful as we cross the border into Poland and wind our way through picturesque rural areas on our way to our next overnight halt in Gdansk. The last regularity before Gdansk (…based on another of Keith Baud’s masterly “marked map”… you sod, Keith!…) doesn’t just throw the cat amongst the pigeons. Oh no Siree, it is the whole damn cattery that gets flung in! Practically the whole field takes the wrong turn off the main road and most of those who don’t end up on the correct track more by luck than good judgement. Visions of the Valence loop on this year’s Monte come flowing back to the fuming navigators.

The welcome in Gdansk is enthusiastic to say the least. A large part of the old town has been cordoned off for our benefit and it seems as half the town has congregated there to cheer us. Great stuff.

Tuesday 13th. Today our aim is the first of our three Baltic states, Lithuania. Again we leave Gdansk on our own time to reach our first control at Malbork Castle. The castle is superb, very sympathetically restored and the size of your average village.

As I return to the car after having spent part of our spare thirty minutes improving my shamefully non-existent knowledge of middle age Poland, a very achy and somewhat shaken Paul greets me. “You’re lucky to still have a navigator” is my first inkling of the drama that just took place. Paul had been standing by SFF checking our next section on the map laid out on the car’s roof when a tour bus rolled into the outer yard where we all were parked. Manoeuvring round after having dropped off his charges, the driver managed to squish Paul between the bus and SFF, spin him round, drag and roll him along the wing and over the bonnet before driving off into the sunset. Paul is shaken, and passably stirred as well, but declines any medical attention despite my insistence, worried that I am about the strong pain in his neck. But the Yorkshire Gorilla is adamant “We’ll see tonight in Vilnius if t’pain don’t get better!”. Owing to his greater height, superior reach and the size of his hands, I’ve long since learnt not to argue in such cases. You don’t want to piss off a gorilla, however friendly he may be under normal circumstances. Trust me, you don’t!

Anyway, it was damn lucky that Paul was standing where he was. Imagine the damage that the bus could have done to the Healey if he hadn’t been there to act as a fender…!!!

We make a lunch halt at the “Wolfsschanze” – Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair from which he directed a substantial part of Germany’s military operations during WWII. It’s a massive bunker complex deep in the forest, complete with airstrip and railway line. A bronze plaque commemorates the failed attempt to blow Hitler up in 1944 and the savage retribution exerted against the plotters. You will have guessed, of course, that Paul and I violated (yet again) the no entry signs and went for a wander inside Uncle Adolf’s personal HQ bunker. Would you have expected anything less of us?

The afternoon session is, for most, the first encounter with the rough stuff. Unevenly paved roads to start with, promptly becoming unmade surfaces. The forest sections we tackle are particularly rough with potholes and bumps galore. The navigation has also now become fairly tricky and the compass comes in handy on a number of occasions. Well trained on Tibetan and African roads, we motor on “energetically” and clean the sections comfortably before crossing into Lithuania where, again, the welcome of the locals is on a grand scale as we storm the roads to the capital, Vilnius.

In Vilnius, there is a definite carnival atmosphere. Competitors are swarmed by locals for pictures and autographs (…fame at last…!) before retiring to a stunning hotel, Le Villon – sadly 14 klicks out of town.

Wednesday 14th. We have just learned that David Wilks, co-driven by brother John, has turned the nose of his Land Crab round and is heading for home. I haven’t seen David since hauling his butt out of our overnight car park in Gdansk to force some food down his throat. He had then returned to his car to continue tinkering with his broken alternator bracket.

Knowing how competitive David is, I don’t buy the alternator bracket story as a probable cause of retirement. Cabin fever seems far more likely as poor brother John is busting his rallying cherry on this event… and has not always been doing a very good job. In all fairness, even some of the top dogs have struggled at times despite their years of experience. Sad to lose them anyway.

One of today’s highlights is the timed blast around the Pärnu kart circuit. We are part of the lucky few who actually do this test. Of the 22 cars that go round, we even set FTD (…damn lucky for us that the course was closed before the Mustangs have a go…!).

It didn’t all happen because the lady liked Milk Tray but because the lady was not wearing her harness and when the door flew open in the hairpin, she spread her wings and flew out of the car. Never in the years that I have known Fred Multon have I seen him so sheepish! But Briony is a real trooper. Despite a half torn off little finger, she didn’t file the divorce papers… she might do in Oslo, though! Freddy, my boy, don’t let me ever hear you reminding me about my crash into a caravan on the 1993 LE JOG! (… and Fred, I do have copies of the local newspaper article and photos for blackmail and/or revenge purposes…!).

So between this incident and some concerns for spectator safety, the CoC wisely decided to pull the plug on the test.

Before being sent to bed in Riga, we tackle a lap consistency test on the Birkenieki Racing Circuit. What a fabulous circuit this. Just over 5 klicks long, winding through a wood with blind crests, hairpins, square lefts and rights (behind brow), two good straights… in one word: the works. The FIA would do their nut from the safety point of view as the concrete walls which line both sides of the track might stop the cars a bit quicker than kitty litter but not quite so gently. But for driver enjoyment, I can only give it top marks.

Saturday 17th. We have left Tallinn and are sailing to Helsinki. Yesterday, while the results team was finalising the figures of Leg 1, six or seven cars have been tinkering quite extensively at a workshop arranged by Willem Lemstra. Anton aan de Stegge has rebuilt the oil-guzzling engine of his 1948 MkIV Jag. Willem has rebuilt his big Healey’s exhaust system but needs front hubs badly. Robert Boon has more or less sorted out his regulator problem on his 250SL Merc. Gerhard Weissenbach has done some damage limitation on the rapidly deteriorating wheels of his 1928 ex-Peking to Paris Phantom I Roller. We have greased SFF all round and fixed a minor oil leak.

By the time we get back to the hotel, the final results are up. Michael Kunz and Carolyn Ward have won the leg in their Merc 280SL, the Gullikers are second in their 300SE Merc and the father and son team of Ronald and Niels Leerman in their Shelby Mustang are third.

We are 4th overall and, with Phil Surtees/Sue Shoosmith 6th in the Willys and Vince Fairclough/John Bayliss 9th in the MGC, our team – the Peking Raiders – have bagged Leg 1, beating the Celts and Cousins 11 – 24. Four of the five Raiders in the top nine, not a bad week’s work all considering.

At the start of the final regularity of Leg 1, we have had the great (…and somewhat pleasant…!) surprise of spotting the black XK 120 of Stan “The Man” Williams and Tony “tsk, tsk, tsk” Davies. With serious clutch problems, the dynamic duo had left Potsdam to return to Holland and have the car fixed, which they promptly did. They had been back on the road a couple of hours when the floor boards of the XK caught fire, compliments of the exhaust system which had been remounted to close to them. Emergency stop at the petrol station they happened to be passing in front of. The face of the locals must have been a sight to behold when Tony, flying out of the XK, grabbed a bucket of water and emptied it inside the car! Back to Holland (again!), exhaust repositioned correctly, dash to Rostock and ferry to Tallinn. The blisters on Tony’s hand? Oh that had nothing to do with the above. He got those whilst changing a red-hot condenser as they were trying not to miss the ferry to Tallinn.

Competition time: After torching his Alvis 4.3 Charlesworth Saloon on the Malts (together with most of Tony’s belongings and, far more importantly, his COMPLETE set of Halda gears), scorching Tony’s bum in the XK and being instrumental to the burns on Tony’s hands, suggest a replacement nickname for Stan The Man. Answers on post cards only to Ian Shapland at Old Stager. Entries close prior to printing of next issue. Six-pack to the winner from my personal kitty. PM.

We hit Jyväskylä, rallying capital of Finland and HQ for many years of the 1000 Lakes Rally, after having sampled our first Finnish gravel roads. Oh my giddy Aunt! What fantastic sections, smoother than many motorways I can think of. Simply brilliant.

And there will be more of the same tomorrow… and the day after… and the day after that… and… Yummy!

Tuesday 20th. The Jyväskylä – Jyväskulä loop that we drove two days ago was absolute heaven. Under particularly strict orders from the “Technical Dept” sitting beside me, I do my utmost to ride the yumps rather than going airborne. “We don’t have any spare spot lights, mate, so it’s up to you!” is the tactful way Paul puts it. I get the message loud and clear and behave… to a point!

Yesterday, en route to Lapland in general and Oulu (Tar centre of the world…I kid you not! Tar ski-ing, tar rowing, tar burning week… and… wait for it!… World Air Guitar Championships!!!) in particular, we get our first big penalties. Paul, convinced that I am having far too much fun, is keeping a hawkish eye on the drive train and the suspension. By mid-morning he spots two broken leaves on the rear nearside spring and puts me under stricter orders still. Spoil sport!

As we roll into the lunch halt, we spot a massive Audi/VW garage only a few hundred yards away from the control. I am promptly kicked out of the driver’s seat with the time card and Paul shoots off to the garage to find some welding gear. Our lunch hour ticks rapidly away and I am getting seriously nervous at not seeing SFF return. Just as I am about to clock out, a Dutch competitor tells me that he has seen Paul who told him that he wouldn’t be finished in time and that I am to make my own way to the garage after clocking out. Oh goodie!

Paul has turned the spring round and is busy welding away. The time it takes me to find the office and pay the bill, the job’s done and we’re ready to go. Unfortunately for us the next activity on the program is a self-start regularity, i.e. we are due to start the regularity “x” number of minutes after having clocked out from the preceding MC.

As I gun the car down the road, Paul suggests that we cut the section altogether as we are already 10 minutes down and still have just over four klicks to get to the start. I want to give it a go and manage to talk him into it. We come haring into the regularity start, overtake seven or eight cars neatly parked up waiting for their start time, and make a flat out flying start into the section twelve minutes later than scheduled. We have tulip diagrams for this reg (but just of the junctions we have to take) and the time we should be at such junctions. In view of the speed we are doing, Paul finds the junctions by halving the times on our instruction sheet.

The car is flying down the narrow gravel road. Practically every bend is power slided round. Oh the joy to have this much grunt on tap. We get max penalties at the first intermediary TP (5 mins). We are overtaking car after car after car (…sorry guys for the gravel showers…) and, at the second TP, we’re 3’08” down and finish 1’19” down at the third and final TP. I am absolutely knackered and drenched in sweat. But we get away with 9’27” instead of the 15 minutes it would have cost had we cut and run. Let’s just call it damage limitation. Later in the day, Paul did the maths: During the reg, we overtook 10 cars, stopped for two TPs (the clock does not stop for TPs. You are timed from start to finish) and averaged 115 kph in the process! Woohoo! Definitely the best and most thrilling drive of the event for us…

But that was yesterday, this evening, at Rovaniemi, we cross the Arctic Circle for the first time!  Santa is here, in his village (…the words “kitsch” and “naff” tend to spring to mind…!), signing our time cards. He compliments me on the Healey (…well, he is Santa after all so of course he knows his cars…! He surely has delivered a few to lucky little boys in the sixties…), signs our maps and gives me a big hug for the camera. Paul doesn’t want to have anything to do with the “old bearded paedophile” (sic).

After the stresses of yesterday’s drive, the spring has given up the ghost and is now completely broken. The nice lady at hotel’s front desk makes loads of phone calls and eventually finds us a workshop. It’s not a garage but metal shop. “Weyhey, we’re cooking with gas tonight!” chuckles Paul as he walks in. The chappie there doesn’t speak a word of English and, as many languages that I speak, Finnish is not one of them. But it’s a delight to sit back and watch him and Paul have a full and animated conversation in sign language. Two professionals together really don’t need words. In just over an hour the spring has been welded back and other bits of metal welded on top.

Back at the hotel we find a very gloomy group surrounding Vince and John’s MGC. The bonnet is up and everyone in turn gives their interpretation of the clinks and clanks that the engine is producing. “I’m telling you, that’s your timing chain”. “No, it’s the big ends, mate”. “Nah, not the noise is not deep enough. It’s a sticking valve”. “A valve? You must be kiddin’! That’s definitely the little ends”. “Little end bearings? Go away! Beyond the shadow of a doubt, that’s a lose widget on the retractable guide of the lever sprocket that’s banging on the tensioning spring of the whatnot’s bracket”. And on, and on and on…

The beauty of being a total mechanical cretin like me is that nobody drags you into such conversations. I just sit around like your average lemon, a look of concern on my face, and watch the world go by. Ignorance is bliss! After having prodded and tinkered and fiddled and fondled for hours, the gruesome twosome declare themselves beat. The MGC will be joining a few other drop outs of the Vulture Truck (…i.e. the car carrier that is following the event…). What a grand 50th birthday Vince is having…!!! A group of us treat him to dinner and try and cheer him up as best we can but his heart is hardly in it. This will be a half-century celebration he won’t forget in a hurry…

Friday 23rd. Vince and John have been hooliganing at will for the last 3 days. They have mainly been driving the official photographer around (…the silly boy rolled his Frontera a few days back. Tsk, tsk, tsk! As Tony would say…) and used that as an excuse to break every rule in the book… thrice! Their steed may only have been an Astra Diesel Estate but I can assure you that the car itself had no idea it could do what it did. Poor Mr Avis would turn in his grave (… is he dead?…) if he knew what the punters get up to with his kit.

We have also lost two days ago, at Gällivare, one of the most colorful characters on this event: “Gentleman” Aart von Bochove. With business commitments requiring his presence back in Amsterdam, Gentleman Aart had arranged to have his replacement driver flown in to Gällivare in his Learjet… what?… you mean you don’t have a private Lear? …Dahling, how can you live without one?… Any way, in the process of the above, he also managed to save our cute little behinds… ours and a few others’ too! The plane’s captain must have wondered what was up when Healey hubs and springs and discs started turning up in his cargo hold, Jag clutch plates, inner tubes and Lord knows what else. How the damn plane ever left the ground remains a mystery.

Aart, hats off! Those who are indebted to you know who they are!

Sweden has been fairly unremarkable other than by the beauty of its forests and the number of its mosquitoes. The damn things form these unbelievable clouds and then drop on you. In addition, the blighters are the size of your average dive-bomber. Everybody is swapping repellents (“Try mine… it’s the one the SAS use in Indonesia”, “OK, but you try mine… It’s a special recipe that the Green Berets brought back from Nam”). Sorry, kids, but mine was the best! I just smeared myself with moose dung and it kept everybody away… including the mozzies!

What have been remarkable, though, are the roads. The gravel continues to rule but this time the icing on the proverbial cake has been the mud. Oh and do we wallow in it! The only thing missing are the scantily clad ladies for the mud-wrestling scenario to be complete. As to the tarmac roads, we have all long agreed that the Swedes can’t build decent ones to save their lives. They are dismal. I suppose if we were given the choice between sexual freedom and building proper roads…

The rate of whoopsies has been slowly increasing. Nothing alarming but increasing none-the-less. The white nights and the midnight sun have been playing havoc with everybody’s sleeping patterns and, added to the demanding driving and increasingly difficult road conditions, crew tiredness is starting to show in more ways than one.

But today is our last day of Leg 2. During last night’s barbecue at Saxnäs (amusingly eaten 500m from our teetotal hotel so that we could have beer and wine…!), Groganite fitted our spare rear spring and we are ready this morning to do battle again with no holds barred.

The navigation into Trondheim will be a bitch and, through Norwegian business contacts, we are well equipped with their equivalent to our OS maps for the last regularity and the final run into town. Come on, Keith, give it your best shot my boy! The day goes perfectly to plan until the ultimate cock-up happens. We wrong slot half a centimetre before reaching the edge of the first OS map…!!!… and compound the error by insisting to drive half-way up the wrong mountain. Uh oh!

We did not come riding down the mountain as in the cheerful little song. We came flying down the blessed thing. The look of sheer horror and stupefaction inside the Willems/Koning Merc 300SE as they see us charging out the fields to rejoin the “main” road for 300 yards and then take the PROPER left turn was a sight to behold. Sorry Jos, sorry Henk (but we did give you a good laugh, though, didn’t we?). Oh well, it was definitely unlucky Day 13 for us. As hard as I tried we dropped 9’42” on this regularity. Even if there had been fewer villages to cross, our wee 12-km detour was thoroughly fatal. Mind you, it was great having the maps. A large number of crews never found the second timing point or approached it from the wrong direction. We, clever clogs, got it… only too late!

So between the spring incident (9’27”), another 10 minute penalty (out of respect for Bart, I will not give any details about it, the main thing for us is that we are satisfied that Bart knows exactly what happened) and our wrong slot (9’42”), we are not exactly at the top of the leader board. We are actually a fair way down at 24th. The sad thing is that, with Vince and John out and Anton and Willemien pouring 6 litres of Hydraulic oil into the Jag’s engine to keep the pressure up, ours is the third best score for the Peking Raiders. Mike and Carolyn are 7th and Phil and Sue are 15th and the dreaded Celts and Cousins (…you know, the guys you Brits call the colonials…) beat us convincingly (11 - 46).

And so the leg is won by Stan the Man and “tsk, tsk, tsk” Davies. John Bateson and Sandra Deumel are second in their MGB and the Mac Allisters’ Amazon completes the podium.

As we relax at the hotel bar, I put my foot seriously down… and for once it is not on the accelerator. Paul is absolutely exhausted. Since we have hit the road, not only has he kept our battlewagon in top form but also he has fixed half the cars on the rally… well OK, not half but definitely a quarter. The man is absolutely bushed and at this rate mistakes are going to start happening soon (… some would say that they already have!).

I send the Yorkshire Wizard to bed, disconnect the phone in the room and fend off mercilessly and fairly rudely any competitor asking me for his help. Stan the Man, Vince, John and “tsk, tsk, tsk” Davies had been close to begging Paul to take it easier and to rest more, rather than spend half the night working on other people’s cars or advising them. I just stick the barrel of the shotgun up his nostrils and march him to bed. In all fairness, I encounter no resistance what so ever. The man is knackered and, still in his overalls, collapses face down on his bed. By the time I finish drawing the curtains, he’s in the Land of Nod.

Sunday 25th. Guess what! Surprise, surprise: Paul’s rest day was spent entirely in a workshop! I modestly repaid Willem back for his Tallinn workshop by arranging one in Trondheim. It was a tractor repair garage with all the heavy kit any of us could dream of. Unfortunately it had no ramp, but the duty forklift kept SFF in the air while Paul busied himself under it. Our spare road spring needed to come off and be strengthened. The standard road stuff we have received will not last at the rate we’re going at. Also, to my great dismay (… and Paul’s casual shrug…), the offside spring has been busy digging a hole in the bodywork.

At the local scrap yard, Paul had picked up some nondescript springs to donate a leaf or two to our spare. By 21:30 hours he had rolled back into the hotel, nicely knackered to start the third leg this morning.

But this morning the news is good. Not only have we got now the mother of suspension set ups but Vince and John are up and running with the MGC, Willem will not risk killing himself with his old front hubs and the luckiest crew of this rally, Jan Zwaan and Jantje Schiphorst, have swapped their Healey’s cracked front discs for some more homogeneous ones…!!! Gordon Phillips has spent 5 hours rolling under Angela Riley’s P5 and changed her big ends (…the car’s that is…! Mind you, I’m not sure that Gordon would have objected to roll 5 hours under Angela herself… we have been on the road for a hell of a long time, you know.)

John and I (… and a few other smarty pants…) have spent a large chunk of the rest day re-plotting the final leg from the 1/300,000 official maps to a sack load of 1/50,000s. Again the name of Keith Baud is called in vain as Ingvar Stølan, my Norwegian friend and business partner, depicts some of the route that lays ahead of us. Keen hunter, Ingvar knows these mountains like the back of his hand… and we don’t like what we hear!

We hare out of a sleepy Trondheim and attack our first regularity. By the second timing point, the difference in maps is already showing and the cars coming in sideways – to the great delight of the assembled locals – into the TC at A (…yes, “A” is the name of the town…) also seem to show that Leg 3 is starting with a “Bang”.

I think we got the message, Bart: “No more Mister Nice Guy!” That’s cool. You’ve put the times up and we’ve got proper maps now. Give us what you’ve got, big boy! As we storm the snowy plateaus, the scenery is breathtaking. Quite literally. With our side screens of, the cold is numbing as we drive through thick snowfields. The mountain lakes that surround us are full of icebergs, little ones of course. Stunning! Even the corkscrew (!) tunnel to Finnset is an experience of its own.

Wednesday 28th. Our last day. The daggers have been drawn during the last 2 or 3 days like never before. Incredibly, with only one day left and after nearly three weeks of rallying, 15 crews could (theoretically) still win the event outright. The suspense is unbelievable. The route has been totally unforgettable these last few days. From sumptuous fjords to snow clad mountains and from sleepy sunny villages to frozen ski resorts, we’ve had it all. And the fog and the sun and the sleet and the sun and the rain and…

But now is the moment of truth. The last 380 klicks. Three regularities and 8 TCs where all could be won or lost. We are 15th overall and have everything to play for. The map makes it abundantly clear that the last regularity will be the Great Decider. “Was it?” I hear you ask. You bet your sweet behind that it was. Maybe the field was not decimated but it sure got one hell of a kicking.

David and Wendy Brown saw a certain leg victory slip through their fingers at TC 16/3 with the death of an universal joint.

Papa and Junior Leerdam missed a TP and were late for another on the last regularity. Cees Willemse and Gatsonides Junior also cocked up the last regularity as did Linus Verhoeks and Ton den Uyl. Same thing again for Jos Willems and Henk Koning.

Willy Cave is whining that he’s had a bad day. With 24 lost seconds, the old pirate is the best today. Vince and John are snapping at his heels with a drop of only 27 seconds. Nigel “I have constantly a battery and charger under my arm” Gray and his wife Christine are close behind with 34. We are 6th with 47 secs. In all, eight crews have clocked less than a minute penalty. The others, from one minute to three hours. As we roll into Oslo to a rapturous welcome, we’ve climbed to 7th overall in Leg 3. Robin Eyre-Maunsell and Willy bag the leg with their Sunbeam Alpine, Stan and Tony are second and Eddy “Clogs” Klokgieters is third with Regene Hansche in their Merc 200.

And so, eighteen days and 3 legs after the sunny Apeldoorn start, John Bateson and Sandra Deumel win the event outright in the MGB. First timers (… I still have my doubts…) Ronald and Niels Leerdam are second in the Shelby Mustang and Phil “Fingers” Surtees and the beautiful Sue (…eat yer heart out, Stan!) are third in the Willys.

What is there to add? Not a lot, really. We may not have broken the bank (…bloody rear springs…) but our gamble paid off. A Prince Hendrik Trophy adorns the family mantelpiece together with a silver medal and a second in class decanter (trust us to have chosen a class with 30 cars in it…!).

Though the Peking Raiders win this leg too (16 – 18), the Team prize goes to the wretched (!) Celts and Cousins and the Mercs triumph in the marque contest.

No, “too”, “ambitious”, “massive” and “disaster” did not come together in the same sentence. Most certainly not. The event went like clockwork. The new regularity system loosely based on Jogularity, the Benularity, devised by Ben Roetgerink was a total success, especially because it foxed the sad so-and-sos who use the “little black boxes” during regularities by not giving you the speeds you have to stick to. Sounds odd but trust me, it works.

With no less than 34 competitors and 9 cars from Peking to Paris, this was the mother of all P2P reunions. (28 are in this photo).

When are we getting the next one, Bart?