It had been raining hard in the week preceding the event and the news told of storms, floods and high winds in the West Country, to worry Exeter competitors and perhaps the marshals as well! We needn’t have worried. By Thursday it had become calmer and milder and by the weekend it was quite warm. However all the water had made the sections pretty competitive, this Exeter was to be no picnic! There were no Falcon’s starting from Bude, so it was Peter Mountain that led us away from the Cirencester start. Peter had entered his Dellow but business pressure prevented it being finished in time so his faithful maroon Skoda was drafted into service again. There was little time to do much to the car so Peter and James just checked the oil and adjusted the brakes. It was this that was to cause problems later!. Normally Peter runs the car back and forth to work for a few days before an event, just to make sure everything is working OK. He didn’t do it this time and it was only on the run out to Cirencester that he noticed the back brakes were binding. Now on a Skoda you have to remove the hubs to adjust the brakes, this needs a special puller and this was at home. Peter continued, but with the brakes rubbing badly was severely down on power.
Tom Goggin had Veronica Caspari in his Escort as usual. Tom had re-shelled his car before Christmas. The new one is very smart indeed, one of the tidiest Escorts I have seen for a long time. Colin Stevens came next, with Kevin Roberts reading the route card. Dave Nash had attended to his engine mountings and was hoping the Skeetle would stay in gear on the tough Exeter hills. Alan Bellamy had entered his ex Andy Clarke Brasilia but the car wasn’t ready so Alan used his faithful Fastback instead.
John Parsons and Mike Pearson ran together and to the best of my knowledge there was nothing different in the mechanical department, although presumably John had attended to his clunking diff since the Allen. Further down the field we should have seen Mike and Shiela Furse in their Racecorp LA. However, the Furse family were striken with flu and decided to spectate and help out rather than compete. A few cars later came a famous name from the past, although not currently a Falcon member. Adrian Tucker-Peake was driving his newly prepared Peugot. In Tucker-Peake tradition the car was four up as Adrian and Liz had bought the kids along.
There was nothing new with the Skoda’s of Neil Bray and Simon Robson, Michael Leete’s VW or Fred Gregory’s Dutton Melos. They were followed by a Dutton Sierra driven by the daughter of Motor Sports Bill Boddy. Then came Falcons only class one entry, Chris Bonnett in his Peugot Diesel. There was no David Alderson as he was busy finalising the preparations of his Beetle for the historic Monte Carlo Rally. Stuart and Andrew Cairney started from Popham in their familiar Imp, and so did Murray and Hazel MacDonald, embarking on their quest for a second consecutive triple in JAZ. The red lantern of the Falcon train was Reg Taylor and Bill Rule in Reg’s RDT special, running number 313, last car on the road.
The weather was kind on the run down to eligibility scruitineering at Chard. Pretty unexciting stuff, perhaps that’s why so many of us had problems staying awake! Then it was breakfast at Cricket St Thomas, the dinning room resplendent with it’s Christmas decorations. Now, assuming they were not really early for 1998 they were a bad omen because they should have been down by twelfth night which is the sixth of January. Unfortunately the normally excellent Cricket St Thomas breakfast was spoilt by some very stringy bacon!
It was dark for most of us when we got to Gatcombe Lane, a nice easy starter hill. I know some people think these sort of sections are a waste of time. Not me, I don’t want to fail the first hill. Then it was little more than a mile of tarmac before crossing the A 3052 at Hangmans Stone to go down into the Forest containing Normans Hump and Clinton to join the queue! The early Falcon runners waited an hour, those running later were in the line for over an hour and a half and by then it stretched out of the forest and onto the road. Normans Hump was the problem. Some say it had been doctored, others that logging operations had dragged a lot of mud onto the track. Either way it was tricky. The lower part of the section wasn’t too bad, although it is getting rougher every year. The big problem came on the steep part, after the cross track, where the class eight’s do their restart. This was very muddy and needed grip. power and momentum to get through.
It was just getting light as Peter Mountain came to the line. The section was being marshalled by some of the Cambridge boys and he was greeted at the start line by Falcon member Geoff Jackson. Peter managed to get reasonable speed as he crossed the track but with a binding brake it was not enough and he bogged down in the muddy section. Our other two Skoda’s got out of the top OK but not without drama. Neil Bray punctured and had to change a wheel and Simon could hear the first signs of diff problems, but carried on regardless. Stuart and Andrew Cairney didn’t have any car difficulties but his 915 cc’s wouldn’t pull the Imp through the clag. Classes’ six and seven had to restart on the cross track. This slowed down their charge into the mud but it didn’t prevent Alan Bellamy and Fred Gregory getting to the top. Michael Leete wasn’t so lucky, or perhaps I should say skilful, and lost grip in the muddy bit. The class eight’s had to re-start right in the middle of the muddy bit and none of the Falcons could get away. JP got to the top and found his cooling fan wasn’t working. He stopped at the bottom of Clinton to hot-wire it so he could continue.
Everyone was anxious to do well on Clinton under the eyes of their clubmate’s. With a level restart on the cross-track, instead of on the gradient it wasn’t so difficult as last year, provided you could get round the difficult corner at the bottom. There’s a sharp ninety right just after the start and you can’t see the steep gradient that comes immediately afterwards. Most of us made it OK but with front wheel drive it defeated Chris Bonnett in his Peugeot. This was certainly going to be tough trial for front wheel drives. Simon Robson provided the drama for the Falcon marshals. He got the Skoda around the corner and up to the restart. Simon let the clutch out and Arnold and Andy were greeted to a tinkling sound as the diff finally cried enough a few feet further on. Simon and Matt managed to limp out of the woods but the car wasn’t going to go much further. They weren’t the only ones. By the time Murray and Hazel arrived there were eight disabled cars waiting for recovery.
After all the carnage in the woods Waterloo and Stretes were relatively uneventful for most. Falcon interest was maintained with John York marshalling with the Woolbridge club at the top of Stretes. Then we had a long run north to the special test at Greenslinch Barton. Many competitors had problems finding the route. There had been an amendment at Cricket St Thomas but the route card still didn’t bear much resemblance to the road and there were cars going in every direction. Fortunately the route marking was correct otherwise there could have been major problems. The special test itself was a downhill blind through Grenslinches’s huge puddle (it’s more like a lake). This was great if you had a waterproof car, like a Beetle, but was a bit daunting if your electric’s were vulnerable.
Exeter services saw a lot of mechanical work. John Parsons managed to buy an override switch for his fan and fitted that. Tom and Dave both had petrol pump problems but they couldn’t do anything to fix them. Neil and Martin were planning to change the tube in their punctured tyre but were held up on the road when their petrol pump stopped working but a swift hammer blow soon fixed things. With no bead breaker and no Dave Nash Neil resorted to Michael Leete’s bit of fence post bolted to the brake drum of the Beetle. Don’t laugh, it worked!
Windout was a tarmac hill, a feature of recent Exeter’s. Marshalled by Mrs Troll (Anne Templeton) it had a liberal coating of mud to catch you if you were too complacent. Tillerton is getting rough again, with a tricky re-start on some huge rock steps for the six, seven and eight’s. This caught out Fred and Michael. The steps were probably a real shock to Chris in his relatively low slung Peugeot. He didn’t get up this one but was clearing quite a few of the hills in only his second classic trial. Fred Gregory’s Dutton Melos had started to fluff at any sort of rev’s and he, Pete Stafford and Neil stripped the carb and petrol pump at the foot of Fingle. It went better but only if Fred gave it a bit of choke. Fred continued to fiddle, finally finding the problem was the coil. It was a 9 volt unit and the Dutton was feeding it with 12 volts. When it got hot the motor missed at high revs. Fred had a spare and carried on by swapping between the two.
It was to get worse at Simms. Simon and Matt Robson had left their Skoda at Seaton and had got a lift to Simms where they met up with a spectating, flu ridden, Mike and Sheila Furse. They saw some of the early cars get up, including Dennis (our hero) Greenslade in his Reliant and Philip Mitchell in his Skoda. There was quite a lot of mud on the hill. It got harder as the day went on and by the time Peter Mountain arrived very few people were cleaning the section. Peter’s brakes were easing off but he couldn’t get the Skoda up for the second year in succession. Last year the car jumped out of gear but before that he had always cleaned Simms.
Peter was in good company as all the other Falcon’s failed, including Murray and Hazel who said goodbye to their triple. They certainly gave it a good try, giving it everything, but to no avail, although they got a good cheer from the spectators for their efforts. John Parsons was another to give the spectators good value. The smoke still lingering several cars later! The final hill was a sting in the tail for some. The route divided. One to six tackling Slippery Sam while seven and eight went to Higher Gabwell.
Chris Bonnett enjoyed Slippery Sam, cleaning the rough section to get a finish in his Peugeot. Things didn’t go very well for Stuart and Andrew. First they failed the re-start, then they missed the obscure right turn at the top and failed to find the Gabwell passage control. Neither Mike nor John faired very well on Higher Gabwell. They had a re-start and this was situated on a huge hole that defeated them. So it was on to Torquay to the finish at the Oswalds and Trecarn Hotels. A lot of members were staying there and we had a dozen or more Falcons around the dinner table to chew over the day’s events. Some people believe that some of the MCC events have been too easy recently and the MCC have been concerned about the financial burden of awarding so many triples. It doesn’t look to have a problem this year!
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