BECC Early Winter - 15 Nov 2003 –  by Derek Mclean

I haven’t had a regular partner this year, so I have done even more newcomer inducting than ever, but I still need to satisfy a craving for Expert class competing now and again, just to stay sane. So when Ewan Leeming was available to navigate we got together again.

There was a risk of either frost or mud, and I had just got some new Colway CS790 M&Ss, so I decided to put them on and try them. I used to use CS770s, which worked well in almost all conditions, but they don’t come in 65 profile, which I have now chosen to use, to raise the Accord a little above its previous ride height on 60s, because of grounding problems. Alas, the 790s don’t work as well as 770s. The car was a lot more nervous, and seemed to have less grip. Even on muddy bits of road I am not sure they provided any benefit, compared with the P6000s I had on it before.

I had another problem too. While fitting the tyres I spotted badly worn front pads, so I fitted some new M1144s, at over £100 the set. I didn’t have time to bed them in properly, and they tend to grab when they are new, so I had to wrestle with severely unbalanced brakes, and drive fairly gently for most of the event.

Whether this lot contributed to my undoing, I’m not sure. But we were about halfway through the event, on a notoriously tricky road known locally as “the Moon and the Stars”, which is also used on the Jim Clark Rally. It is one of organiser Monty Pearson’s favourite roads. It is where he had an “off” on the JCMR about four years ago, just a few hundred yards away at the “hog’s back”. But that, as they say, is another story!

We had dropped 2 minutes about two sections earlier, and it turned out that Charlie Brown/Neil Turner had dropped only one, which turned out to be their eventual score. We might well have cleaned the rest of the event too, and would have come second, but for the mishap on the Moon and Stars. Just past Nether Monynut, I was reminding Ewan that this was where the Land-Rover had rolled on the JCMR when we did Closing Car, and before I had finished speaking the road became suddenly very muddy on a downhill 30 left. Result – I slid into a gateway. I can’t have been doing more than about 20 mph, because I only travelled about 20 yards on mud and soft grass before coming to a halt, just off the road on the flat.

A bigger error was not looking to check the lie of the land. If I had got out with a torch and looked I probably would have been able to drive out, but I tried to reverse without checking, and put my front wheel over the edge of a slope, which on soft ground is fatal. All attempts to extricate it made it slew round and get deeper in. I had to walk about 300 yards up the hill to get a phone signal, and I contacted recovery man Ken Wishart, who came and pulled me out. No damage, except to my pride. But even his LWB Land-Rover was spinning wheels on the mud, and he had to use his winch to haul my front wheels up the banking.

Monty had found some roads I hadn’t seen before, and we were very happy with the half of the event that we did complete. As for the mishap, well when you are driving a little bit more enthusiastically than usual this is always a slight risk. And the combination of tyres, brakes, mud and maybe a slight lack of concentration were enough to ensure a mistake this time. Another lesson learned.

Updated 23 November 2003
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