At the time we arranged it, we were enjoying the longest dry spell ever in the UK. So obviously that changed and it was wetter than the organiser had ever seen Rushmoor. There were multiple water splashes, some not intentional. I think the bigger hindrance from the weather was that it was pretty miserable to stand in the paddock chatting to other competitors so we didn't do as much of that as perhaps we would normally.
I met Jon at his house and we drove to Rushmoor in his Fabia, having adjusted the harnesses to fit me. The width of the seat was not adjustable, so my fat arse adjusted itself over the course of the day to fit in it. Since the passenger seat can accommodate SJ who is, I understand, taller than me (
), I had no other problem fitting except for my eye line being barely above the bottom of the windscreen.
I'm sure Jon was aware that I had no experience co-driving, but hey - I've listened to podcast interviews with Nicky Grist; how hard could it be? Probably easier if you've got 20/20 vision, we rapidly realised. I couldn't read the numbers on the stage maps with my glasses on, but couldn't read the numbers on the cones with my glasses off. Trial and error led to me doing the bookish vicar move of lifting my specs to look at the map and putting them back down if I needed to see where we were. I also shut up a bit after the first stage; there's no point reading out 'Left Through 1, Right Through 2, Left Through 3' when Jon could see them all from the start line and we were through them pretty much as fast as I could read them out
The only downside of the day came from the burger van in the paddock. It was quite handy that he set up in front of our spot; but he put his generator in front of us and it was only when he packed up mid-afternoon that I realised how noisy it had been. I'm sure that is the major reason behind my headache today. Bacon rolls and burgers were good though.
Don't make the mistake of thinking Jon's Fabia is a bit staid to be a rally car. It's great, feels really proper with the cage and harnesses, Terratrip in front of me (didn't use it - couldn't have reached it anyway when the harnesses were done up) and various noises come from underneath. Nice fruity induction and I thought the exhaust sounded good, though the scrutineer chap remembered Jon and almost simply waved him through because it's so quiet
So, how did we do? The first stage was a real learning curve, but still great fun and we did more planning for stage 2 - the stages were all around the arena following a route marked on paper through numbered cone gates which didn't generally move between stages. So you became familiar with sections, which helped me massively because I could write notes like 'WIPERS' to remind Jon to turn them on before the water splashes. I got better throughout the 6 stages but it took until the afternoon to work out exactly what was useful to Jon though. Not very useful was ballsing up my calls on gate 51 in the afternoon because I'd written the note in the wrong place and couldn't find it while being flung around (we had to miss it first time and go through it second time - I said exactly the opposite); fortunately Jon got it right from memory both times.
The first run in reverse (not literally, just going the opposite direction round the arena) seemed to be going OK, but that was the one stage we messed up. I called it correctly (miss 10, right to gate 9) but gate 10 wasn't numbered from that direction because it was running in reverse and the road to gate 9 was a really awkward angle from the previous gate (11). Jon missed gate 9 and we got the maximum time+20s which dropped us from second in class to 4th. The time sheets showed plenty of people on the same time for the stage.
Overall we made a place back up to come 3rd in class - annoyingly, 2nd would have got us a trophy. So I missed out on taking home some silverware for the cats to knock over. Looking at the stage times today, it appears we were closest to the fast guys on stage 5 and it did feel like that one went well; it was the longest of the day and we got closest to catching the car ahead of us. So the Skoda definitely has some speed in it. It feels good from the co-driver's seat; only once did we get rampant wheelspin and on one slightly uphill nasty surface it almost felt 4wd, so well did it get the power down in 1st. It's good fun; I know I'd not drive anywhere near as quickly as Jon so I won't be buying my own rally car, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I took very few photos so Jon will have to add the ones taken by the official photographer when they're up. Thanks very much to Jon for inviting me
