Edinburgh Trip - February 2001

Nuit Blanche 2001 - A competitors perspective.

Driver - James Woods
Navigator - Gareth Jackson.

The Nuit Blanche navigational rally organised by Edinburgh Motor Club formed part of the Scottish and Irish Universities chanpionship and was held on the 24th February.

The story of the clubs trip is now well known. Five cars and crews set off for Edinburg on friday afternoon, arriving at various times due to people taking different roads and the miracles of satelite navigation. We found exactly the place we were looking for, the only problem being it was about 5 miles the wrong side of edinburgh!! Over a mobile "Arthurs seat" got turned into "Arthur Street" and hence the confusion. Either that or someone was sampling scottish beers and was starting to lose the clarity in their voice. Paddy ??

Unfortunately due to the outbreak of the dreaded foot and mouth saturdays programme was cut as the autotests had to be cancelled. Instead a joint driver / navigator table top was arranged. This was to give us all practice at plotting a route on a map using the scottish form of notes. This provoked some interesting coments such as "But it doesn't work." Other problems came up like is going round a roundabout the wrong way a valid clue. All old hat to scottish crews but for those like me doing a scottish rally for the first time it was definately interesting.

The main reason for us going was the rally on the saturday night. It snowed on saturday afternoon and then rained, forming slush. This then froze making driving conditions very difficult. The first challenge for us was getting out of the car park without hitting the wall by the road (yes I guess we should have called it a night at that point.)

We found the rally quite enjoyable, apart from the major lack of grip. We were getting on pretty well on the clues and had managed to only drop a few minutes of lateness despite sliding around a lot on the ice. This became more signifigant about half a mile from TC10 when I lost the car on a quickish right over a bridge. Result, reasonably heavy shunt and some hedge surfing (on the navigators side of course) before finally landing back onto our wheels. We didn't hit anything particulary solid just a lot of soft things. I remember saying "Ah well that didn't hurt too much- wonder if it still goes". It didn't.

So if anyone has a cheap shell for a nova, get in touch.....

Also check out the photos, if you can see a bit thats straight and you want it let me know. Most of the car is now for sale.

The other car not to make it home was also a nova, this time suspension failure was to blame. A damaged spring failed and the continual banging lifted the turret off the inner wing.

At least the two shells had a good and proper end.

Two of the other crews did very well, pocketing silver ware with the final crew finishing a very respectable third in class. Especially as this was the navigators first outing. Better not tell the scottish crews.......

Quotes of the weekend...

  1. "Wonder if it still goes" James
  2. "Anyone got a welder" Andy
  3. "Wooop wooop woop" Jonny
  4. "We was robbed" P****
  5. "Ahh, its alot easy when they work" Jonny
  6. "To finish first, first you've got to finish.
  7. " Mmmmmmmmmmm "Its not the pace of the event that bothers me its the sudden stops at the end" Keith