PEDLEY RALLYING

After much anticipation, we headed north to the picturesque island of Mull on the west coast of Scotland for the annual Tour of Mull  organised by the 2300 Club and due to government approved road closures orders, uses the public roads of the island to give crews one of the longest and hardest events on the calendar.

Due to the nature of the event, we felt it essential that we had a good back-up crew and were joined at various stages in the days before the rally by younger sons Matthew and Craig, brother Dave, fellow HMMC member Neil Moreton and the dynamic duo John Deegan and Chris Smith. All were to prove invaluable in the team effort to follow. 

The event began with scrutineering on Friday, followed by the first leg of seven stages with the first car leaving the start ramp at 8pm. Leg two was schedulded to start at midday on Saturday with the third and final leg starting at 9pm on Saturday night. With 150 entries, and each car starting at one minute intervals, this meant the cars running at the back of the field had long waits and early morning finishes.

As we arrived at the start in Tobermory, news was already coming through that the first two cars, the pre-event favourites Callum Duffy and Neil Mackinnon had both retired and other had already had dramas including John Cope who had been off the road on stage but managed to continue despite taking a stage maximum dropping him to last place. Our seeding of 157 gave us a start time of 10.21pm and we approached the ramp looking forward to starting the event.

The car seeded directly in front of us was the Bear Cub Rally Sport car of Heather and John Macrone, this being a project that was born out of last year's event when the people of the village of Dervaig, formed the club to give the youngsters the opportunity to build and compete in their own rally car and with lots of effort and determination, the result looked stunning. At the start Heather was understandably nervous, as this was the first time she had competed on any rally.

As we set off, on Stage One, Mishnish Lochs, the car, driver and co-driver immediately settled into a good rhythym and went over the Mishnish lochs section of the first stage very cleanly and as we approached the hairpins above the village of Dervaig we could see the lights of the Bear Cub car in front and we were reeling them in very quickly, as we started to climb the hairpins, we rounded a tight right hander to find ourselves right behind Heather and John, but showing calm beyond her years, she made the correct signals, moved over and let us past costing us very little time. The first hint of problems that we would encounter later in the event then reared its head, and as we rounded a tight hairpin, the revs of the car dropped and because we were using the power steering, the cooling fan and the lamp pod the engine died. After a few seconds turning everything off, the car fired up again and we went on to complete the stage in 9.03, a big improvement on the 20 minutes in 2003 when we spent most of the time in ditch, so with Stage One completed, we met our emergency service team of Dave, Neil and Matthew, and with nothing to do on the car, we continued on to Stage Two. 

Photo courtesy of Rob Lees

The second stage was a fourteen mile run from Dervaig over the Hill Road, down Loch Tuath to Killechronan and Chris was enjoying himself as the car responded to everything he asked for. Midway through the stage we took a flat crest at speed jumping into the air, as we landed the sumpguard took the full force of the landing, bending the brackets and pushing the guard up against the exhaust, as we tried to pull away the engine wouldn't rev and we realised that the guard was causing some sort of restriction, either with the exhaust or the gearchange mechanism. After the end of stage two, we had a run into service at Craignure and a chance for the boys to remodel the sumpguard and brackets, this brought a big smile to the face of John who saw his chance to wheel out his grinder and welder. After a frantic twenty minutes, John was happy that he had, temporarily a least, solved the guard problems.    

With service over, we then had a long twenty eight mile road section out to the Ardtun stage at Bunessan which was to be Stage Three and a second run through for Stage Four. The stage was only just over two miles long, but was a very demanding test and gave us our biggest fright of the weekend when we came over a big jump and as we landed the back of the car skipped right and put the back wheels on the grass, sliding sideways, with great skill and control, Chris managed to get the car back in a straight line without touching the wall on the other side, but left us both realising what a lucky escape we had just had. The second run through Ardtun was much more controlled with Chris aware of the nervous reaction of the back of the car, although cautious we were still four seconds quicker. 

Another long road section saw us run back up to Kinloch for the next two stages which was the first visit of the rally around Loch Scridain and Gribun Rocks. Wary of how the rear of the car was going to react over the jumps, Chris decided to back off a little bit and play the percentage game and make sure we got through the first leg unscathed. These two stages were dispatched at a sensible steady pace, followed by the last stage of the night which was the first run around Calgary Bay. This was a very frustrating stage as we knew both the car and Chris could have gone much faster with a better set-up, but having completed this stage, we headed off to bed and had a couple of hours on Saturday morning to work on improving the car.

After our quick power nap, we started to assess the car and found that the guard repair was only just holding, and this gave John the chance to break out the grinder and welder again, this time a more permanent repair was fashioned. Neil and Dave got to work on the set-up, raising the ride height of the car, hopefully to reduce the nervousness at the rear of the car.

A look at the results after the first leg showed us lying in 92nd position, but what was remarkable was the fact that almost fifty cars had retired. This proved what a tough and demanding event we were involved in.

The restart for the Saturday afternoon leg was from the village of Salen, with a very compact set of stages, designed to give spectators the maximum opportunity to see the cars, with two runs over the Hill Road, plus a tour round Calgary Bay. as we approached the arrival of Stage Eight, we discovered that the stage had been stopped as the Escort Cosworth of George Grieve and Lee Carter had crashed and the driver required medical attention, with George ultimately being airlifted to Glasgow for further treatment. The delay meant that Stage Eight had to be cancelled, with all the cars being sent through the stage at normal road speed onto the start of Stage Nine, the first run over the Hill Road. The car was slightly better over the jumps, but the nearside cv joint was now giving cause for concern as the rubber boot had split, depositing all the grease inside the wheel arch, meaning the joint was running dry and with three stages to complete before we would see Dave and Neil for running repairs, we had to be cautious in order to minimise any further damage. As we approached the big jump towards the end of the Hill Road, we caught sight of Dave, Neil and Matthew who had taken the opportunity to do some spectating whilst waiting for us to complete the second Hill Road stage. After completing the Hill Road, Stage Ten was a run around Calgary Bay, in the opposite direction to the previous night, and again was approached with caution as Chris was concerned that the CV joint was becoming very noisy. Another run over the Hill Road was completed without drama and we then had the opportuity to give some urgent attention to the driveshaft. This was done in the finest traditions of emergency repairs, with lots of grease and even more tanktape! 

Happy that a repair had been fashioned good enough to get us through the last stage before service, we were stopped chatting with the boys, when car number 148, the Nova of Andy Blower and Andy Smith pulled behind us, desperate for fuel. As with the nature of the event and rallying in general, the lads didn't give it a second thought and fuelled them up ready for the rest of the afternoon's stages. As we approached the stage arrival we found a long line of cars waiting to the start of the stage. After some investigation, we discovered that a car had gone off and dropped large quantities of oil and water onto the road making it treachourous for the folowing cars. After another long delay we were told the stage was cancelled and we would be sent through the stage at non-competitive speed. Another big frustration as we would only receive a nominal time and didn't get the opportunity to improve our position on Chris's favourite stage of the rally.   

A slow run through back to Tobermory saw the lads waiting for us in service and they all went to work as soon as we arrived, with a driveshaft change being completed within ten minutes. We set off on our way to the last two stages of the afternoon, Gribun and Loch Scridain. The car was feeling a lot better with the new shaft in place, but our main concern was that due to the long delays previously encountered, the light was failing fast and we along with most of the other cars at the end of the field hadn't fitted our auxillary lights.

After a steady run round Gribun, we started the last stage and felt it was going really well until we rounded a left hand bend to see Car 148, the Nova of Andy Blower stuck in the middle of the road and unable to move, frustratingly we were stopped with no where to go and what seemed like an age before the car was manhandled out the way, what a way to repay us after pinching our petrol!!! After reporting the incident to the marshals at the end of the stage, we received an amended time more reflective of our performance on the previous stages. With that stage out of the way, we then had the long run back home for some food before the third and final leg. arriving back at about 6.30pm, we were due to restart at around 10.30pm, which didn't give us much time for anything other than refitting the lights, feeding our faces and catching a quick forty winks.    

Photo courtesy of Rob Lees

The restart was again from Salen and we waited for our start time with lots of anticipation as Chris was much happier with the set up of the car. The first stage of the night was the 22 miler around Loch Tuath and Calgary Bay, and Chris was really in the mood to go for it and he drove with any alarms to record a time of 26 mins 31seconds, beating our 2003 time by over 7 minutes which was a fantastic performance and reflected just how far Chris has come in the last two years, not that Chris got too excited as his first comment was that he could have gone quicker! The next stage was the run from Dervaig to Tobermory, one of the stages that we were denied earlier in the day, and being Chris's favourite stage was dispatched very efficiently and I'm sure not sure how much notice was taken of the pace notes as Chris seemed to go onto autopilot, as after each note, I heard "yeh I know!" Once again we bettered our '03 time by some margin and then headed off on the long run down to the service halt at Craignure and on this occasion it was a very relaxed break as Chris was happy with the car and the lads just had a routine check over the car and this gave us chance to catch up with many visitors to our service area, including Martin Fox and his team, who unfortunately had retired on Friday night, and the Plant twins. Heading out of service for the final leg of the rally showed us lying around 70th place which we were very happy with, and thoughts were now beginning to turn to making sure we made the finish. The next two stages were very routine and dispatched without any alarms and we headed off to the last stage which was a run over the hill road and down the awesome Glen Aros road. As we approached the start of the stage, we saw the now familiar sight of a large queue of cars waiting. News was then received that car number 17 the Evo 9 of John and Paula Swinscoe had crashed at the bottom of the hill road in Dervaig, meaning nearly all the cars left in the rally were parked at the stage start. With a very long wait ahead, Chris did the honourable thing and went to sleep!!! After an hour and a half waiting, we received the news that the stage would run and we pulled up to the start line with one thing in mind - to get to the finish. No risks were taken and as we approached the Dervaig junction, we spotted the crowds in the churchyard, the same place we were spectating twelve months earlier, knowing that the lads would be there cheering us on. The final run down Glen Aros saw us with the finish line almost in sight, and we opted for caution and backed off to make sure we didn't make any mistakes. As we crossed the finish line, we were absolutely elated and also had a great sense of relief that we hadn't let the lads down and we had brought the car home in once piece. Reaching the final control saw us bump into Ann McCormack, entries secretary of the North West Stages who congratulated us on our result and we headed off to Tobermory to hand in our time cards and check out on our final position. Reaching Aros Hall we bumped into Steve Davies, the leading light behind the Bear Cub project, who was just welcoming home his charges Heather and John, despite retiring from the main rally, had entered the trophy rally and completed the route on their first attempt, we have been there and know exactly how they must be feeling. Checking the results, we found that we had moved up from the position at last service and had been classified in 62nd place and 11th in class. We were very pleased with the result and the fact that we had made a massive improvement on our previous attempt in 2003. 

The event was won by islander James MacGillvary in his Subaru Impreza from John Cope who had been in  last place after the first stage. George Grieve, John and Paula Swinscoe were airlifted off the island to hospital after their respective accidents, but all were making good progress with their recoveries.