In case anyone would like a little 12-car report reading:

It’s been a long 8+ months since our last 12 car but Luis and I enjoyed a run out on the Borough 18 Motor Club’s November 12 car in Kent on Friday (16^th October). There were 2 CMC crews taking part – myself & Luis, and Jim Bowie & Mike Helm – it was lovely to have a brief catch up with them at the start. After having gathered at Medway services to get the set of route envelopes (as experts we were on ‘plot n bash’ where we could only open the clues for the next section when we got to the previous control) and meet everyone else (oh and for me to do some physio exercises on the car park floor as I’d injured my back earlier in the week!), we headed off to TC1 just along the M2 from the services. Some more physio exercises in the P&R car park then into the car and ready to start.

The first couple of sections were pretty smooth plotting (first one plotted on the move, 2^nd one needed a pause but was done quickly) which gave us chance to concentrate on the ‘proper’ roads that the organisers had found for us….we’d been particularly keen to fit something in before the Preston and considering this was a 12 car on public roads, some of the sections used got us as close as possible to some of the Preston tracks! Some slippy muddy sections and plenty of grass up the middle. Section 2 had a difficult navigation decision as, between two clues there were two route options….measuring them carefully later on they were 0.02km different in length. I chose the northern route but lost confidence when we saw someone else go the other way so we turned round and went the southern way (which did avoid a small settlement). We already knew timing was tight as we lost 2 minutes on the first section which we did cleanly, so yet more time was lost.

I struggled with working out the plot for the first bit of the 3^rd section…the time control had been pretty much on a junction…so I didn’t really see that junction on the map when trying to plot and couldn’t make a route fit. Luckily Luis noticed someone else turning down the side road and said which made me re-look at the map and realise my mistake….which made everything else easy to plot quickly.

Then it all went to pot! The instructions for the fourth section looked simple (tulips but no balls/arrows)….only issue was a district boundary followed the line of a very short section of yellow road which meant it was near-impossible to spot it on the map. There was a similar shaped junction going a different way so I took us that way, only to end up on a white road that didn’t follow through. I realised we were rapidly losing time on this tight-timed event so decided to backtrack and take a shorter route to the control. I saw a yellow triangle on route so we picked up a code board on there. Fighting time, we weren’t helped by a PR issue with a chap who was rather irate about people ‘racing’ through his area so after a couple of minutes trying to calm the issue we pushed on again. We deliberately cut a couple of twistier roads to take a smoother route to try to keep in time….our OTL would be 21:31 and we pulled into control at 21:30:58!

A silly miss by me on the next section (again, a very short yellow obscured by a symbol but this symbol was a gradient arrow so it should have been obvious that it was a road!) meant that I struggled to plot it. Trying to plot backwards didn’t help as the last junction that we should have used didn’t feature in the instructions (which were junction based)! Concerns were confirmed when we not only passed a codeboard in the wrong direction but we then met Jim Bowie & Mike Helm coming towards us! We were OTL so turned round at the next junction rather than approaching the TC on a narrow road in WD.

The last 3 sections were easily plotted but they turned out to be shortest route so we weren’t able to save any time which meant we were OTL at all of the rest of the controls. That and meeting members of the public on very narrow roads (including on a gradient arrow up on a hairpin!) was a frustrating point from a competition point of view but I quickly resigned to taking them all as a bit of practise (which is ultimately why we entered) for both plotting and calling roads…which we did indeed get a good amount of.

In terms of Covid-safe procedures I was impressed at how well it went. All paperwork was done before we arrived, marshals showed us the time on their phone using the BBC time then we wrote it down, and it went pretty smoothly. We just both found it very strange not being able to see others immediately afterwards – especially when you’ve struggled with a section it is always good to debrief quickly afterwards and work out what the mistakes were.

We were really grateful to the organisers and all the marshals who put in so much effort to ensure we were able to finally have a go at event. Fingers crossed for more events being able to go ahead. And of course, big thanks to Luis for sorting out the car for the event and being up for the event