Oh - What a Night!

And a test it certainly was. As we arrived in Dover at around 1.30 there some ashen faces around with one car (blue Triumph 2000) already out, wrapped around a tree. Some had penalties of hours. 

The first 2 forest sections near Brands Hatch were lethal - mostly slimy mud. Just the thing for our Ford Transit tyres. Not surprisingly, the top 2 were those with proper rally tyres and we, amazingly, came in third; just about managing to stay on the road by travelling mostly sideways through the mud to slow us down. 

The 50km road rally that followed in the tight and twisty lanes of Kent was mostly on tarmac but equally treacherous, hopping through fields between roads. These are essentially blats round the lanes with regular controls to very tight timing. Everyone lost time to some degree against the target but we were unlucky to be baulked by some of the heavy 4x4 field which cost us 3 mins of lateness as we had to pass 6 cars. We ended up with 5 mins lateness in 4th overall which we would happily have settled for at Brooklands.

This is a long event so the first night is a matter of survival. To stay in the rally is good enough and everything else a bonus. The real rally starts in Africa when hours can be lost each day rather than minutes and seconds so our plan is just to try and stay on the road, plod along and see what happens.