By Kevin Dyras | Pictures by Dave Govier
The 18th of May saw the club descend upon Croft Farm in West Malvern on a beautiful morning, albeit a bit chilly early on. There were 9 sections laid out, without the slightest bit of water anywhere to be seen. We had 10 drivers on the day, with 3 dropping out earlier in the week due to illness. Get well soon people! Team Govier had laid out 9 interesting sections and, just as for the first event of the year, the lack of rain recently meant that the ground was very dry and hard. We opted to run just one group of 10 drivers.
This was the first event since we lost John Dingley. Bruce said a few emotional words and we all spent a minute in reflection for John. John was a great character and will be sadly missed. He would always be one of the first to offer help to anyone and everyone, and always enjoyed himself, never complaining when things went wrong.
We ran 5 sections in the morning without problems, and by midday most of the competitors were on clear. Steve and I discussed this over lunch, but decided that the only way to make the sections more difficult was to make them possibly dangerous, so we decided to leave them alone, especially as everyone was enjoying the day.
A couple of competitors were causing some comments. Firstly Dave Jenkinson had a new set of wheels fitted to the 110 with a wider offset. This change seemed to have a marked improvement on the turning circle, much to Dave and Joe’s satisfaction. Not sure that they will like it so much on a wet muddy course as the tyres now stick out noticeably.
The other driver being talked about was Zack Therin in his Range Rover Classic. For the benefit of those who have not been to this site you need to understand that it is set on the side of the Malvern Hills, so almost all of the sections had a lot of steep up and downs.
All the other drivers seemed to use a lot of heavy right boot to overcome gravity, but not Zack. Zack said he was concerned about the state of his centre differential, so instead relied upon the low-down torque of the diesel engine. Most of us experienced old hands watching soon stared commenting things like “he will never get up there” and “he will stall going up there”. The only problem was that Zack didn’t seem to understand what we all knew, so just plodded around the sections on tick over, with only the odd climb defeating the Rangie.
The event ran smoothly, without any damage or anyone needing recovery, until the last section. At this point Dave and Joe were separated by just one point. Joe went first and attempting the steep climb to the one gate there was a loud crack and front wheel drive disappeared. This left Joe on 3 points and Dave on 2, but without a functioning vehicle. Of course the most cynical observers might have said that Joe broke it deliberately to prevent his dad beating him on the day, but I know that’s not true. In any case it did not matter because after a quick inspection of the front axle Cotty offered the use of his Landy to Dave to finish the day. Little Dave accepted and managed to reach the 1 gate, just beating Joe by 1 point.
All the drivers helped collect in the canes and tidy up the site after a very enjoyable day. After prize giving, we all headed off home, with some of us stopping on the way for a rest. The next event is at Hatton Park, Warwick, on the 8th of June. We hope to see you all there.
