Hi Folks,

the rally is over and as I suspected, John has won it with a cracking ride. My planning was very good, I had spent a lot of time in the optimisation of it. It was based on a one hour buffer that should give me the possibility to bag a lot of points at the end of the rally. And if something should happen, I would still have the one hour buffer.

Yorkshire Dales – how to keep a 57 mph (91 km/h) moving average here???

In the end, I was able to maintain the hour despite all the bonus location stops, text-in-bonus, spell-a-word-game, fuel stops. But at 4 p.m., with only three hours to go, my misery began. It was based on my lack of knowledge of the English geography. I had never been to the Yorkshire Dales and did not know that this was a “sucker bonus” area. I did not know that Basecamp and the Garmin Sat Navs would would give me a totally underestimated travel time between the A66, the Tan Hill Pub (England’s highest pub) and the White Scar cave. I had never shouted the word “Bastard! BASTARD! BASTAAAAAAARD!” with more fervour during a rally. But this only means that the rally master did a good job and laid out the trap. And I walked right in it. My buffer melted away and when my predicted arrival time was 5 minutes past the finish time without penalty, I decided to skip the nearby White Scar cave worth lots of points and went directly to the M6 to return as quick as possible.

The route. I realised after one hour I hadn’t switched on the SPOT!

It was a good ride though, Rick the Rallybas….Rallymaster! did a very good job. This rally would have deserved much more attendees. John has restored British faith, I mean, a Kraut winning three British rallies in a row…. :-). Well done, mate!