Saturday 2nd September. Start and finish just east of Inverness, Culloden and Balloch respectively.It was to be 150 miles, but because of the poor entry that eventually reached 10, they curtailed it to 90 and scrubbed the second half. I was told it was mainly to reduce marshal problems, but I reckon there was more to it than that.

Anyway, to quote the winning navigator Neil Turner, “It was those that didn’t compete that were the losers”. The event hasn’t had an unblemished record, but this one was pretty fair. Actually that may not be the best choice of word, as it did rain for a wee while, but it wasn’t too bad in terms of conditions – just a bit wet, not nearly as bad as the year the A9 was flooded and partly destroyed, and we had to wade through huge puddles leaving North Kessock on the way home.

Another N.T. quote, “90 miles without a pothole!”

I was a slightly reluctant competitor, being the only one that answered EUMSC’s young Eamonn Williams’ call for a driver. Well, I couldn’t let him down, could I?
He’s coming on. He has that very useful ability to plot on the move without problems. Well, apart from the tendency not to tell me much about the road ahead, but that will come in due course, when he gets more experience. I had to make a couple of contributions to the clue-solving, but he did most of it without consultation. What was it now? Ah yes, the ‘Sample Point’. I had to explain it to him. There were also some calculations that I helped with, plus the usual reading of numbers, etc.

I first did the Autumn in 1995. That was also my first time with Dave Crooke. Jock Ross has been the Clerk of the Course every time I’ve been back since. He must be running out of ideas by now! The only one of his ‘usual tricks’ was the Moy white, which I knew about. It is shown on the map as a dead-end, but it goes. And he almost always uses it. It can be tricky to find, but I’ve even got that one sussed now.

Neil, with his usual Charlie Brown, was the only Open class competitor, with the only clean sheet too. There were five of us in Non-ex, and the rest were in Novice. We might have been third, one minute behind the class winners, but Eamonn lost his clipboard and didn’t write a code down. He eventually found it, but forgot about the code. It was written on the clue, but of course that’s not good enough! He said afterwards, “I won’t do THAT again.” Rallying is full of lessons, not to mention excuses, ‘if only’s, etc.
So we ended up on 6 minutes plus 1 code. Class winner was on 5 minutes, and the second crew had 14. One non-ex crew failed to finish. I haven’t had a reply to my email, but I did hear they had a stomach problem. Not happened to them before, as far as I know, so it must have been a dodgy fish supper or something. We had a good one in Aviemore.

I think it’s time HCC retired J.R., if only to give him a rest, but I’ll go back again if I still manage to retain some enthusiasm myself.

[results]

Updated 8 January 2006
Webmaster - Jim Paterson