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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 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) Christina Dudley – birthday girl! A Hare (Sarah, probably might
be Keri) 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
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 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:
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.
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
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