As you will no doubt remember, last November saw Suzy thoroughly enjoy driving on her first 12-car rally with yours truly alongside "on-the-maps". However, despite our best efforts, the 2nd round in mid December of this Croydon & Sevenoaks promoted series (to which Southern were invited), the 3rd round in January, the 4th in February and the 5th in March all managed to coincide with a Christmas party and various unavoidable business exhibitions.

So it wasn't until the evening of Friday 9th April that we found ourselves in a car park just north of Oxted, ready to start our second event together. The November round, being the first in Weald M.C.'s series, had been aimed as usual at novice crews and "rusty" experts. However, the last round is traditionally somewhat tougher!

With O/S maps 187 & 188 at the ready, pencils sharpened and "potty" plugged in (N.B. this is an illuminated map magnifier, not a reflection on Suzy's driving skills) we waited for our start time to arrive, at which time we would be given the navigational hand-out for the first section of route. This consisted of about a dozen out-of-order "Tulip" diagrams, with only a few direction arrows given, which meant that care was needed to match the correct junction diagrams with those on the map. Add to that, one diagram which had been rotated 90, and it was immediately obvious that this round would definitely be trickier.

We sussed the rotated tulip quicker than several cars ahead of us and got to the Time Control in Staffhurst Wood only a minute or so late. The sight that greeted us there was a queue of virtually all the crews ahead of us, scratching their heads over a fiendish set of letters. These turned out to be a code which, when cracked, gave a list of grid squares to be visited in the order given. After a while, I worked on the assumption that since the code only fitted halfway when tried forwards, it was probably worth trying backwards. This also worked until about halfway, so I came to the only logical conclusion and assumed that the organisers had made an uncharacteristic error and omitted one letter. On this basis, the code fitted perfectly and gave only one possible route, upon which we set out with a minor convoy of perplexed fellow competitors in tow!

The Time Control was soon found where expected near Crockham Hill but the delay working out the route had dropped us about 8 minutes. Thankfully, no missed code boards meant no "fails".

The next section was comparatively straight forward with instructions in the form of departing junctions in the direction of the minute hand on a clock face, although we did pass a couple of errant crews, who had missed tricky turnings, en route to the T.C. on Horns Hill near Chartwell.

However, the next section proved to be the downfall of several expert crews (the novices had easier navigation) when faced with the following string of letters: BRBTRBBLRRTRRLTRTRRLTRL. Unless you've seen this before, it can be extremely vexing: L's and R's tend to be lefts and rights, but T, which is often "turn" or "T-junction", was obviously something more obscure. And what about B ? If you think in terms of leaving each grid square by either the Top, Bottom, Left or Right-hand-side, rather than which direction to take at a junction, the route to the control under the A21 bridge soon becomes clear. Luckily, I had come across this form of navigation some years ago and this was to be the section where we gained several places as a result.

Next up was a "circular herringbone" with no clues where to start or whether to go clockwise or anti-clockwise. The usual trick is to look for a crossroads first and then try working back. The other trick is to guess where you would expect the route to go at the next 2 or 3 junctions, then look for this pattern on the circle. A combination of these approaches fitted perfectly and took us to the next T.C. via a particularly tight uphill hairpin turn left.

Having spent half of Easter under Suzy's Mini fitting a not exactly inexpensive Janspeed stainless steel exhaust, I had no desire to see it smashed to bits and suggested we went past the junction in order to turn around where there was more room, rather than try handbraking round or driving straight over the tarmac step! It was well worth it as we gathered at the finish that one crew got "beached" on it and blocked the lane for the competitors immediately behind them.

The penultimate section started just north of Sundridge and required accurate plotting of some out-of-order map references. The correct route was the shortest one passing through all of them once. However, remembering to approach one of them from the compass direction given, added an extra 2 mile loop west of Knockholt, which had a passage control on it to catch out the unwary.

Although this caused us no problems, somehow I managed to take us the wrong way at the final junction only yards from the time control, when I got my South East's and my South West's muddled!

The time wasted finding my error dropped us another couple of minutes. However, at least we hadn't gone too far in the wrong direction away from the control, which was located by the Pilgrim's Way at Brasted.

The final piece of navigation gave us the route from here to the finish at Tatsfield in the form of a map trace showing the roads to be avoided. This took us via an especially slippery farmyard which saw the Mini performing some interesting manoeuvres, ones that Suzy claimed later to be of its own accord! Rule 1 of rally driving; always keep your navigators believing that you're in total control at all times, then any mistakes must be down to them!!

The final few miles along the Pilgrim's Way and up Titsey Hill were comparatively less dramatic but no less enjoyable. Perhaps this was down to the knowledge that a pint and some sandwiches awaited us in the bar of "The Ship", where results were soon published showing us 3rd Overall and 2nd Expert, out of 10 entries.

This was a particularly pleasing result on only our second event together, and we both really enjoyed the perfect combination of tricky but not mind-bending navigation with interesting, testing lanes, surprisingly devoid of the general public. If only we didn't have to wait until November for the next season to begin. Still, at least it gives us plenty of time to pressgang some fellow Southern members into joining us.