Hendra Tour of Cornwall

The invitation to do the event came out of the blue and didn't take long to accept. I'm not sure whether Colin knew I had never done a stage event before but if he did not he took the news quite well.

Calling the notes in the Alps on the last night of the Monte Historique, when we were simply driving the Mini Cooper as fast as it would go, had felt a bit like doing a stage, and had sort of given me an idea that I might like to try it for real, so it didn't take me long to make up my mind.

One immediate problem was that I didn't have either overalls or a crash helmet, so we needed to find someone (or two) with the same rough shape and size of head as me. Graham Sansom turned out to have the right sized head and Colin Knott of Sevenoaks more or less the right shape of body, so we were able to solve the first problem quite quickly. Thanks guys!

Veteran  club member Martin Wilgoss has a cottage just outside Wadebridge which he kindly lent to us for the weekend, so we were able to accommodate crew, wives and service crew.

Colin had the car on Pete Sansom's rolling road before we left for Cornwall and reported that it was producing 290 brake, which seemed an awful lot to me, and also to the drive shafts, as we shall see later!

A last minute panic was caused by Colin discovering a soft brake pedal the day before we were due to set off, and Martine and I arrived at Colin's house at the

appointed hour to find no sign of either Colin or the car. After working on the brakes until 11 o'clock the night before without any success, he had gone to a local garage to try to find a pressure bleeder.

There was no improvement, but the brakes worked alright, so we decided to set off for Cornwall and have another go later.

As we were now 1½ hours later than planned we headed straight to scrutineering at Wadebridge and then on to Documentation at Hendra (just outside Newquay) before heading for the cottage, where I worked on the route, petrol requirements etc. and Colin and the service crew had another go at the brakes. There was still no improvement, but the run to and from Hendra had shown that although the pedal felt a bit disconcerting the car stopped perfectly, so we had a snack and retired to the Maltsters Arms with the service crew to sample the local brew.

When we got to Hendra Ian Coppings artic was already in the car park, but there was no sign of him or his crew. After signing on we walked the Hendra stage, which was the only recce we were allowed to do.

Saturday morning dawned clear and bright, if a bit cold, so we put soft compound tyres on the front for the first two stages, at Portreath airfield. Two 7.5 milers, with two splits and merges, I was a little anxious about the splits, remembering Motoring News rally editor David Evans' experience with David Higgins on the Kent two years ago. I decided that to avoid having to think too much, I would colour code the roads out of each split - orange first run and green second - and it worked, much to my relief.

We were 31st overall and 6th in class on the first run over Portreath, and equal29th overall and 4th in class on the second run, so I felt well pleased with our initial efforts.

After service back at the start, Cornwall College in Camborne, we headed south to two more airfield stages, this time at Predannack, south of Helston, while the service crew headed for the next service area in Helston itself.

The  Predannack stages were 8 miles long, with just one split and merge, safely negotiated. We managed equal 26th and 5th in class on the first one and equal 28th and 5th in class on the second, which was good enough to pull us up to 4th in class at second service.

I was starting to get up to speed with my calling, although there was one 90 right just after a chicane that I managed to call late twice. Fortunately there was plenty of road to drift wide on!

At Helston there was time for a chat with Bob Barker, servicing for Ian, but when I saw Ian he was complaining about fuel (pressure I assumed) and his times were suffering accordingly

This rally is nothing if not one of extremes, and the next for stages totalled 3.2 miles between them and involved 42 road miles to boot! Not to mention a PC in the middle of Truro High Street - at Saturday lunchtime!

The first of these, Carclew was 0.85 miles - short but perfectly formed with a cattle grid, two 90s  a left/right by a barn and a steep downhill into a muddy 80 left with a sharp edge to the concrete on the inside.

On our first run the car in front attacked the barn and having been waved down by marshals way too early we found them broadside across the track, but with room to get past. We dropped about 4 seconds as a result. There was then a long delay while the stage was cleared before we could take our second run, which was 4 seconds quicker.

Howard West  was out on the event as a Driving Standards Observer and had positioned himself on the exit road from the Stage to enforce a strict speed limit imposed because of animals in the neighbouring fields. We stopped for a chat, but trying to pull away quietly uphill Colin stalled the engine and when he pressed

the starter button there was - silence. It started after rolling back down the hill, but the same thing happened when we reached the next main road and we needed a push to get going.

The next pair of stages were .75 miles in the grounds of a school - obviously an ex-country house. And we were sixth in class on both.

Since the third stage we had been swapping seconds for 4th and 5th in class, and this continued with return visits to Predannack and Portreath. The starter motor problem was cured at service, having been traced to a broken wire to the starter button. A new wire cured it.

During the afternoon we had started to get problems with the intercom, with Colin's headset being plagued with a loud buzzing sound, with mine affected to a lesser extent. We thought at first that it had something to do with transmissions from the many military establishments in the area, but it got worse and towards the end Colin could hear little of what I was calling. We also discovered, on putting the lighting pod on the car at the final service of the afternoon, that we had no lights whatsoever, so we took the pod off again and crossed our fingers that the light would hold.

The next pair of stages were over Penhale Sands. The OS map shows no contours at all, but in reality there should be plenty as the road winds it's way over and through sand dunes. With a failing intercom, the sun low in our eyes, no sunglasses and only an approximate idea of where the road went, we had to take it cautiously, and our 10th and 8th in class put us back down to 6th in class by the time we reached Hendra for the final two stages of the day, 0.9 miles round the caravan park.

On the first run we were giving it full bore up the hill through the camp buildings when - bang - the offside driveshaft gave way and all we could do was trickle to a halt in the most uncomfortable position possible - right alongside the P.A. van with it's large speakers blaring out the commentary. The only consolation was that I only had to walk twenty yards to hand in our Damage Declaration after an assessment of our position led to the conclusion that we weren't going to get any further. We couldn't push the car to service for the crew to work on as it was too far away; we could push it to parc ferme but them we would have to push it to service in the morning, and we couldn't fix it there as we didn't have a spare on board or the right tools. We had had a good day and were pretty knackered so decided that the bar was the best destination.

Ian's times picked up next day and he was able to finish 31st overall and 7th in class, while the class was won by a country mile by Royston Carey and Steve Hodgson in the Clio, who also just made it into the top 10 overall.

For us it was a disappointing end to a very enjoyable event, which is already in the diary to do next year - if Mr. Quaife can come up with some stronger drive shafts

Oh, and I suppose I'd better start saving up for a helmet and some overalls!