Gordon and I entered the Taunton Open, having decided to contest as many of the ASWMC events as calendar and time allows. Also first proper outing for the 106 1300cc Rallye apart from two course drives of the Derek Stone.
Nothing untoward on way down apart from seeing a woman clearly being given driving instruction in a 318i on the M4 couldn't stay within the nearside lane at all, then a big big Merc doing 90 in outside lane with a space saver wheel on the front, and I thought there was 50 limit!
We take a long straightish B road across from Taunton to what must be one of the smallest garages for scrutineering I have seen and in a tiny village. Passed scrutineering and the car starts to overheat, put decent amount of water in, does not look good so we leave it a while why we sign on etc. Do I phone home and ask to leave front door unbolted?
Start venue was quite good, another small village on top of Exmoor but they did a great fillet steak.
Clues were all pre plot tulips, whilst plotting it rained heavy, apparently it had rained every day for past 3 weeks. Event started and car no longer overheating, fingers crossed. We are entering controls 2-3 minutes early but you can never gaurantee this will last so we keep the pressure on dropping one minute on first timecard and one on second timecard. At petrol, where you still got served with petrol!, we were equal 1st, only 6 on 1 minute after first time card. Time card 3 we were clean, still coming in most controls minutes early. Only ford on the route was quite deep, almost through it when car stops with rear of car still in the water. Just will not start, Gordon cranks it out of the water on the starter but by now two cars behind us waiting as we are blocking exit of the ford. Eventually we can get it close enough to the side that they get past and after what seems an age eventually car starts and stays going. This is now a real challenge and we go for broke and get into the next control with just 4 seconds to spare. Penultimate section we are still clean, not having local knowledge we miss a small slot left described as gravel but transpired to be muddy, very short reverse, seconds only and we pick up penultimate passage check then a long two mile section across top of Exmoor and we enter control 3 minutes late. Overall result, we are second by just one minute. Wewere beaten on that last section by a local crew who proabably knew the slot left and also the long run in and could therefore get a bit more speed out of their 1600GTi than our little old 1300. Still a very nice trophy for first experts, won by Russell Brookes no less in 1972. Car ran like a dream, quite quick and nippy and much better on the brakes than either of the Escorts. Only two errors all night, a farm yard visit when road went right (driver) and a turn right at T when it was left (navigator), both would not have cost more than 40 seconds, so all in all a pretty good event, we will be back next year. On the way home, never seen so many stretch limo's and Hummer strecth limo's all on their way to Cardiff for Chelsea v Arsenal, Chelsea won that, the Derek Stone 12 car on the Friday was well received so a very successful weekend all round.