After our (Dave Leadbetter on the maps once again) solid finish on the last round of the Championship the SW Enduro, we headed off for our ‘home’ round. Even if our ‘home’ round involved a two hour drive to Norfolk !!
After the SW Enduro where we aimed for a finish, I wanted to return to the top ten/five on the EACS Enduro, so we set off from the start ‘on a mission’.
The day route was great fun with a great variety of tests from short tight tests to (much) longer and open flowing tests at Sculthorpe. With our ‘on a mission’ status we were setting many top 5 and top 3 test times, and even with a bit of a scare in the bomb dump at Sculthorpe we made it supper halt with the car in tact and still with road legal tyres at the front !!!!
Supper halt was all about a ‘filling’ meal as the organisers called it and swapping the front tyres for the spares, as they had lost the outer edge from all the running at Sculthorpe, plus a lot of rally ‘banter’.
On to the night route and the first control we get to Peter Valentine is manning and he tells us its ‘Flat to the next control lads’ the route was through a private concrete lane at the edge of a field. What Peter forgot to mention was the kink right left near the end of the section, we got to this at a fair old pace (flat in fourth) and there was no way we were going to make the corners. So I straightened the car up and aimed it at the field, amazingly there was no edge to the road, so with a slight bit of flying (and a lot of ploughing) we ended up in the field losing about 20mph. So all I needed to do was drop it to third gear and drive out of the field.
The rest of the night route was a lot less eventful (thankfully) and was a good thrash around the lanes of Norfolk, including the usual finish at Brandiston which was a very fast finish to the night route. So much so I couldn’t stop for the final control, due to the brakes fading !!!!
Sunday however could have seen our downfall, after a faultless (and perhaps best ever night route performance by Dave on the maps) run throughout the event we ended up stopping in the wrong stop box on one of the Sunday tests. At this point, we both wanted to end it all then, but on getting back to the hotel, we found out that there was no penalty listed for stopping in the wrong box. So we got away with a wrong test by the smallest of margins. However I also managed to over cook things a bit on the Sunday by hitting two cones, this cost us that top 5 finish we wanted. But 6th overall and 1st Expert was very pleasing after a tough battle with the top crews throughout the event.
See here for more detailed results.
Some better (bigger) pics are now out from M & H Photography (See Corperate Links further down for a link to their site).
(Click on any picture to see the full size version)
The hairpin in the bombdump test at MoD Sculthorpe, with the mud flying.....
This shows us on the night route at Brandiston airfield, with the car showing how hard we were trying on that section. Where we set a time 30 seconds quicker than the event winner Owen Turner !!! :)
Pre - Event :-
This weekend we (Dave Leadbetter on the maps again) are off to Norfolk for my own motor clubs Endurance Rally the EACS Endurance Rally. The rally is based in Norwich and uses the many old airfields and narrow lanes in the area to produce an event where its biggest rival is the action in the bar before and after the event !
We are seeded 16th for this event and more information about the event can be found here Chelmsford MC.
