Bedford Car Club

Club Points Tables

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Event Reports

 

 



November Autotests

 

BBQ / Prizegiving

 

July Autotest

 

Freedom Treasure Hunt

April Autotest

April Mini Rally

Sutton Karting 1

Mad March Hare

Frost February

From St. Neots it started

 

 

Event Reports

 

November 9th - Autotests

Another good entry, boosted by our friends from Club Triumph.  Roger Dudley, in the only Mini entered was way out in front all day, but there were only 1.5 seconds between the next 5 places at half-way.

Eddie Jarvis, on only his second ever event opened enough of a gap in the second half to win the PCA, which allowed 14 year old Rob Dudley to take the Class win.

 

 Click here for full results

 

Some pictures

Eddie Jarvis      Andrew Dudley              Mike Bishop or Darren Armitage

Rob Dudley      Doug Foreman               Martin Randle  Andrew Green

Mike Banks      Ruth Price  Andrew Lewis  Steph Donoghue

Peter Fern         Course car!                    Roger Dudley

Katie Foreman

 

July 20th

30 people attended the Annual Barbecue and Prizegiving, courtesy of Pauline and Roger Rigby.

Despite the wind being even more biting than the diners, a good time was had by all.

We welcomed our newest member – 11 week old Evelyn Piper.

 

July 6th

Good entry this time – very close competition all day.

First and second split by just 0.41 seconds after 8 tests!

Congratulations to Eddie Jarvis and Ruth Price on their first ever event.

 

Click here for results

 

Photos:-

Andrew Dudley (or it might be Rob)

Andrew Green

Andrew Lewis

Christina Dudley – birthday girl!

Eddie Jarvis

Michael Botteley

Ruth Price

A Hare (Sarah, probably might be Keri)

Tim Hare

 

 

May 11 - Autotest

Only 8 entries at a warm Little Houghton, but good fun was had by all.

Click here for results.

 

A selection of photos from the day:-

Andrew Dudley Peter Fern Jamie Moore? Christina being a little scamp

 

Laura Dudley  Steve Harrison  Rob Dudley   Sarah Hare

 

 

Dec 30 – Holiday Autotest

18 entries for this event, reviving an old tradition of doing something over the holiday period.

2 goes each at 4 straightforward tests were a good way to blow away the cobwebs!

Click here for results.

 

Dec 16 Santa Special Mini Rally

A full entry for Don Findlay’s event, boosted by a contingent from our friends at Club Triumph.

 

October Autotest

10 entrants turned up for the PCA at Little Houghton, which marked Roger Dudley’s debut as Clerk of the Course.

Click here for results.

 

Freedom Treasure Hunt.

 

Four crews turned up for Tim & Amy Hare's enjoyable "Freedom" Treasure Hunt on 20th May.

Starting from Baldock Services - which gave a whole new interpretation of the phrase "Fast" Food, it ran round Ashwell and back towards Clfton and Henlow to finish at The Crown in Henlow Village. 

As well as the usual selection of things to find and not too tricky questions to answer, there were also some "Dad's Bonus" questions, inspired by, but not directly related to, route questions.  A nice touch and well received.

 

Results

1.    Team Lewis (3 of them + a Donoghue) - 114 points

2.    Team "The rest of the Hares" ( 5 of them, including Sarah's boyfriend and Arron's mate) -   110 points

3.    The "Magnificent 7" (Steve Harrison + Kerri Sibley plus about 300 other people packed into a Disco) - 105 points

4.    Rod Botteley ( Just 1 of him, as the rest of his crew were still in bed , apparently, when it was time to set out, so he did it on his own) 100 points.

 

April Autotest

 

   

 

 

 

 

Andrew Lewis Video 1.2Mb

 

Results

 

 

April Mini Rally

 

4 crews turned up for a trip East and South of Northampton, including old favourites like Castle Ashby, Brixworth, Bozenham Mill and as many canal bridges as I could find!  Also apparently included “my favourite layby”?  (I am getting too predictable..)

 

Everybody enjoyed the roads, though not everybody enjoyed the navigation. 

I didn’t, for a start, because somehow I had left a spot height out of Section 2, which caused some confusion.  Derek doesn’t read map references, missing the approach direction to the finish.  Jason found a variation to the ‘Overs & Unders’ of Section 3, which I continue to maintain is longer than my route.  Nigel did something similar, but had spent so long plotting earlier sections that they didn’t bother driving the last one. Andrew G just serenely blasted round the whole thing, as Rob had to be on his way back to Sheffield that night.

 

Just for the experience of going against the clock, Section 1 was timed for tie-break purposes, but it wasn’t needed.

 

1          Rob & Andrew Green              0F        9 Mins

2          Derek Hillyard / Don Findlay    1F        20 Min

3          Jacqui & Jason Piper                2F        21 Min

4          Dale Barker / Nigel Abdullah    5F        21 Min

                                                                                                Colin Lewis

 

 

 

 

Sutton Karting 31st March

 

Suttonvideo1, Suttonvideo2

 

Another sunny Saturday at Sutton for the first karting event of the year and a good turn out of twelve people. With twelve people it was decided that we would run an endurance event of around an hour with two per team and driver changes every 10-15 minutes. The teams were made so that a quicker driver was paired with a slower driver to make it fairly equal.

 

As the first drivers went out the positions were decided within a few laps, George Gale took the lead with Ed Gale in 2nd whilst a little way back Claire sat in 3rd. The positions stayed the same throughout the next few driver changes.

 

Results:

 

  1. Mike Axon, George Gale
  2. William Hillyard, Ed Gale
  3. Dean Porter, Claire
  4. Paul Clarke, Rob Dudley
  5. Pete Barker, Oliver Axon
  6. Christian, Rachel Summers

 

 

March Hare Mini Rally 18th March

 

Only 4 (3 ˝ really - Don was playing all by himself *) crews supported Jason in his debut as an MR Organiser.

And a very good attempt it was, too.  Very straightforward navigation but with enough tricks to get a result on the road without resorting to cross-country tie breakers.

 

A nice touch was Derek manning a passage check, where he would hand out the navigation for the last 2 Sections.  We were promised we would find him before the A507, and as we were near Astwood at the time, that was a way away.  In fact, if you had stood on the roof of your car, you could have almost seen him lurking looking for Wrong Approaches on the Stagsden village loop!  Everybody found him, though.  Section 1 was Map References in order, with the standing instruction of ‘ don’t turn right on to an A road’ coming into play.

 

Don missed the last board in the section on the end of Bromham bridge, claiming avoiding oncoming traffic was a higher priority!

 

We were all worried about the lack of boards on section 2 until it transpired that the one round Kempston West End had gone missing.

 

Rob and Polly made a complete hash of Section 3 missing their 2 Boards here. It was a spot heights section, complicated by the fact that some of the actual spots are being obliterated by other markings on the map, like Recreational Route or Cycle Route markers, which someone at Ordnance Survey obviously thinks is more important.

 

Steve and David did likewise and also missed the second board in Section 4 – a grid square tracing job.

 

The last section caused the only controversy.  Calling for 10 YYY Junctions to get back to the finish, there were actually 11 on the intended route, because the tiny spur up to Old Warden church is actually yellow (in a certain light).  Jason, I and David all missed that, but Don didn’t.

He not only found an alternative that had 10 Junctions but, after some impressive measuring origami from Derek, worked out 100 metres shorter!  In the spirit of fairness, the boards on the ‘wrong’ route were scrubbed and nobody lost out.

 

A very enjoyable event, I thought and Jason, you can certainly do another one!

 

Results

 

Andrew Lewis / Colin Lewis                  0F

Don Findlay                                        2F

Polly Naylor / Robin Judge                   6F

Steve Needham / David Harrison           8F

(under this scoring system it was 2 Fails for missing a Board completely)

 

* [ Notice I said ‘ all by’ and not  ‘with’ – very restrained, I thought?]

 

 

Frost February 18th February 2007

 

7 crews turned out for the first Mini Rally of 2007 including 3 cars from Club Triumph

The start from the south car park at Priory county park saw them running around in the park looking for a hidden code board located 160 metres from the start on top of a railway sleeper buried end on in the ground. Everyone found the board and provided an excellent tiebreaker for the finish.

The route stayed to the south of Bedford and covered just over sixty miles.

Navigation was simple with spot heights, grid references, a herringbone and grid squares out of order. One board went missing in the last section and was removed from the results.

 

Position

Crew

Hidden Board

Fails

1

Jackie & Jason Piper

6”23

0

2

Polly & Rob Judge

5”10

1

3

Andy B.J & Sue

7” 00

1

4

Barker & Abdullah

11”24

1

5

Needham & Harrison

13”20

1

6

Ellis & Keith

7” 20

2

7

Andrew & Colin Lewis

8” 17

Retired

 

 

From St Neots It Started

 

Mini Rally 19th November 2006

 

It didn’t actually start from ST Neots but just South in Eaton Socon at The Highwayman Pub.   Five crews turned out and they began plotting at 6.00pm.  The standing instructions were crucial to read and re-read as the “green triangles” found at road junctions were to play a vital part in the driving.  Also there was the need to keep as far away as possible from Colesden Grange Farm.

 

Even though it was only three of four miles from the start several crews could not find it without help.

 

The first section was simple, two spot heights with the direction of departure from them.  This gave several route options but only one was correct and only one crew got it right.  The correct route went through Staploe and Honeydon using some of the true classic roads.  Each section had a tie breaker the first one was, How many animals of each species to Moses take on to the Arc?  Not everyone got it right.

 

The second Section was some sections of yellow road lifted from the OS map and edited to remove junctions and other identifiers.  They were also varied in their orientation.  Amazingly everyone eventually plotted it correctly, They didn’t all drive it correctly by not taking into account the green triangles.  The loop through Roxton was missed by one crew and the lay-by on the A428 was missed by most of them.  Gill was waiting patiently in Roxton to hand out the last section.  It brought back memories of marshalling on the timed events we used to run. 

 

Tie breaker which words in the English Language does everyone pronounce incorrectly?  WE had a good range of answers here, only one crew got it right. 

 

Section three was a series of Grid lines that included a white in Great Bar ford, all bar one missed it, The route went all round Willington and included the triangle near the Dovecote

 

Tie Breaker, If you have two coins totalling 11pence and one is not a 10P what are the 2 coins.

 

The next section was two spot heights only and taking into account farm rule, it meant the correct route went past Cardington, down through Haynes taking the longest route around the wooded area and coming back up though Old Warden.  At one green triangle the crews were faced with two code boards at the same time,  only one was correct, not everyone chose it as I had hoped.

 

Tie breaker Is it legal for a Man to Marry his widow’s sister?

 

Section 5 was simply go to end of section at 14504990,  taking into account the farm and triangle rule only one crew got it right,  There is a big white loop in Ickwell and a very large Green triangle.  The centre of Ickwell is a maze of whites which I will remember for the future.

 

Tie breaker, How many birthdays does the average Englishman have?

 

The last section was simply cross three grid lines to get to the Pub. This was easy unless you failed to spot the little yellow in Blunham which kept you away from the farm and the triangle (which was a bit rounded off) half way around it.

 

It’s fair to say that most missed it.

 

Tie breaker, If you drove a bus, picked up 10 people, drove to the next stop dropped off 3 but picked up 4, drove to church street picked up 11 , dropped off 5 and then reached the terminus 20 minutes later, what would the drivers name be?

 

At the end most of the crews were surprised to find they had managed so many fails, so was I as I had made sure they would all be pretty much on the route at all times.  Anyway the route had been enjoyable with many miles of the route in de-restricted areas.   Thanks to all those who came along and to Gill for marshalling.

 

Every section had at least one fail and Andrew Green with Sarah navigating won the event by a clear margin.

 

Results

 

Name

Position

Fails

A and S Green

1

2

Team Red Bus

2

8

A and K Martin

3

11

D Barker & N Abdullah

4

12

D and K Foreman

5

18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's new?

November Autotest results and Pictures

 

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