Poor old South Hams MC! What a horrendous night to be holding an event! I have to first of all say thank you to all the Marshals who were out during the night! Flooding everywhere, a downpour of rain till around 1am and then freezing conditions! Your a dedicated group and we couldn’t carry on without you!

It was very wet on the way down to Cornwall for this years Guy Fawkes, my favourite event from 2011. Arriving at scrutineering the cover wasn’t really doing much at the petrol station to keep anyone or anything dry! And then up to the Jamaica Inn until the off, a very good venue with plenty of space and more then enough food and drink for everyone! It was a early start for the rally going straight into the forests, so we arrived at around 6pm to sort out the parts of the route we had, this event always has handouts and some plot and bash!

On the entrance into Halvanna Forrest (the start of the rally) there was a large puddle around 2ft deep, which later caught out the Brokes in the BRM and the Healy didn’t even attempt it! A little ways into the forest and it got very confusing, this section was done on a marked map handed out at the start of the forest, a couple controls were missing and a crossroads turned out to the a miss a left, which caused some confusion when coming to the next control as we weren’t sure where we were! This was a bit of the case for the first half of the night, the conditions caused a lot of problems with missing marshals and sections that hand to be re-routed last minute. To be honest, I wasn’t enjoying myself.

Onto Petrol, now that’s a petrol station!!! One expensive pump of petrol for 20 odd rally cars all wanting to go through at the same time and get out on there minute, not a easy task! (Maybe a different one next year!) Only to go up the road and find the next 40 odd mile section completly scrubbed due to flooding. This gave us an hour before entering the forest again, a good chance to catch up with people and have a chat!

This was more like it, fast flowing sections through the forest, everything as it should (except one pc missing and 2 tc27’s…), this carried on for the rest of the evening, a lot better flowing, things where they should have been and plenty of puddles to go through! Again, several last minute re-routes due to flooding, but hats off to SHMC! At one point I think they were running 7 course cars just to try and get us through the floods! Not a easy task! It was a little disappointing to end how it did, we got to one point where competitors were qued up in-front of us waiting, a car was parked across the road ahead and all the roads around were flooded, so with only a few miles left to do, that was it and we all retired back to the finish.

Nice finish venue with a lovely breakfast, the results were soon to come out and no Blue Book warriors to hold things up! It was getting light so we headed home with a 7th position, better then our seeding so happy!

Thank you to SHMC again on what must of been a Nightmare! (Should swap your rally names around!) Will definitely be back next year, the forests are a brilliant addition and if it hadn’t of been raining it would of probably been my favourite rally of the year again!

Daniel Pidgeon, Nav Car 10, Subaru Impreza