Happy New Rallying Year

2010 starts with the 2009 running of the Specsavers Christmas Stages - one week late due to restrictions placed upon Croft Circuit by the High Court.

Weather - Snow and Ice followed by an afternoon of more snow!

What a laugh! No more dashing round Croft at the ton, this year they did it at 20 mph with the more confident having a burst of 30 or 40 mph (that should please Mrs Moaner and the High Court). Navigators were looking out of the window at the marshals and shrugging as though to say " there is nothing for me to do here!" By SS3 they had worked out that if they got off the racing line they could actually get some traction so the speed doubled - to 40 mph with bursts of ooooh 55ish.

After lunch it started to snow and the speccies developed a new sport - snowballing the marshals! illegitmate scroats! The organisers took pity on all and sundry and announced that SS7 would be the last stage so that we could all go home early, thank you so much, whether this was taking pity on those of us that were now resembling Polar Bears or the dwindling number of runners, no one will ever know.

I have never had so much fun standing up! LOL

Valentines day and we are in College Moor for the Riponian Stages Rally. An excellent day for rallying, snow on the ground but the sun was in the sky.

We were allocated Junctions 6 & 7 (halfway into the stage but 50metres from Tom Smiths Cross) with Chris Jarvis, Gemini 12, although due to parking restrictions we were on 6 and Chris was on 7.

Paul Bird won in the Ford focus WRC, a win he dedicated to his mother who is seriously ill, Tony Thompson was second in the Evo 9, with Jonny Milner third in the Toyota Corolla WRC.

The Vernal Equinox finds us at Melbourne for the 2010 running of the Trackrod Lookout Stages Rally. Circumstances dictate that there are only two of us, but, as usual we are at the barn and are joined by several Rotating Ferrets (we thought we were mad!) - see their Tweets, Facebook page and stuff on You Tube.

The day; dry and sunny though a cool breeze, fiftysome runners but with Melbournes usual attrition rate we ended the day with just 30! Unfortunately the day was punctuated with stops so that the fallen could go home, when will they learn that that is not fair to those of us who freely give up our time, and had we not had these stops we could have all been home an hour earlier! there was even one solitary car escorted out because he had a plane to catch - a normal person would have parked in such a position to ensure they could get out!

In the afternoon we were joined by rallying Royalty, the one and only Marshal of the year 2006, MSA training officer Bob Wright who himself witnessed the aforementioned shenanigans.

In short a good days rallying, good company and many interesting titbits and anecdotes - thanks Ferrets and thanks Bob.

The North Humberside Motor Club John Overend Memorial Rally, held at Melbourne Airfield.

Excellent spring weather and we were not at the barn but diametrically opposite near the bottom of the pits.

We had no incidents although there was a car rolled near the finish and a straw bale on fire at the barn end

4 months since our last outing, due to there being no events on, though we haven't been idle we have had days out speccying at Harewood Hill Climb, the Autograss at Moor Monkton and The Cock o' the North bike races at Olivers Mount.

But today we are out working again and after due consideration of all the offers we had we plumbed for helping North Humberside on Langdale 2, Langdale 1 having been run the night before. We were assigned to Junction 13, the main spectator entrance for this non-spectator event.

Weather was changeable I understand they even had hail in Housedale, they also had a nasty accident and one driver had to be air lifted to hospital by the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. We however had no incidents just some good interaction with the speccies and a TV crew who were filming for the Motors TV programme featuring the British Historic Rally Championship - keep an eye out for our banner when it is aired!

Gwyndaf Evans won the International but failed to pass Keith Cronin in the British Rally Championship. Keith adds the 2010 crown to his 2009 one by 98 points to Gwyndafs 88.

Jonathan Gale won Historic cup but were runners up in the 2010 Dunlop / Wonago MSA British Historic Rally Championship to David Stokes and Guy Weaver