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The HERO London - Lisbon Rally 2000 or Trial by Healey It was of course raining and windy as Tom Bishop and I drove my Healey 100/6 to the start of the HERO London - Lisbon 2000, hoping for warmer weather when we reached Spain. We were heading towards scrutineering which was being held in the Waterworks building in Sunbury on Thames. At scrutineering, the Healey passed all the checks, although as usual we both had everything crossed for the noise test. The decision was "Just about OK." We both breathed again! It was then off to Hampton Court Palace for signing on and the start of the first day's run to Portsmouth and the ferry. Today was to be the learning day; to show all the competitors how the timing system and the road book worked, and would not count towards the overall points. We were in Class D2, which comprised six Healeys, including the two very fast cars of David Hack and Paul Minassian and the lovely works 3000 of Lady Pauline Harris. This car is believed to be the only authentic unrestored 1962 team car left, having been campaigned by Seigle Morris, Hopkirk, Makinen and the Morley Brothers. Others in the class were Christine Laidlaw's most beautiful Ferrari 250GT Berlinetta SWB, an MGC and the very quick Scimitar Coupé of Chris Tomlinson.
The bad news was Guildford Saturday morning traffic. The good news was a very switched on young lady in the post office who organized Tom a licence in less than ten minutes. We made the MC on time! We left Singleton and it was then on to a regularity through some of the most beautiful parts of the South Downs, followed by a quick run down the A3(M) arriving at Portsmouth Docks to board P&O's Pride of Bilbao. The two days at sea were fairly uneventful, with calm weather and plenty of time to relax before the competition proper. The rallyists very soon split into two definite camps: those who were tucked away in quiet corners poring over maps and route books, and those who reckoned that exercising their right arms was the best way to pass the time. I will not admit to anything! We arrived in Bilbao, disembarked at about 08.00 and set off to the Guggenheim Museum for the start of the rally. Following the route out of the docks, we got to 2.07km: the directions said turn left, which we did, and realized almost immediately that we and most other competitors had found one of the very few glitches in the route book. After a quick bit of clandestine reversing, we were back heading in the right direction, only to miss a left turn a few more km down the road. This time it was definitely pilot error and we ended up taking the scenic route through the centre of Bilbao in the Monday morning rush hour. A salutary lesson! The Start. We were flagged off from the Museum by John Brown and various local dignitaries and set off west towards the Picos de Europa. We had not gone more than a couple of km when we passed Paul Minassian's Healey parked by the side of the road with terminal engine problems. Sadly, he was to take no further part in the rally. We were discussing this when Tom remarked that we had 32 minutes left to cover 35 km. The transit sections were certainly not going to be a piece of cake. This was more obvious later on, when after refuelling during the lunch stop, we only had time to grab a bit of custard tart and get going again.
That evening we were both very despondent to find that we had only managed 22nd place overall. Determined to do better the next day, we decided that a good night's sleep was needed. However at 03.30 we were wakened by clanging cowbells, tremendous crashing noises and lots of shouting. Bang went our plan of a good night's sleep. In the morning we found that the commotion had been caused by a herd of cows that had taken a liking to the wonderful display of chrysanthemums in large pots on the windowsills of our hotel. The resulting carnage was impressive. The cows, after their nocturnal feast were all asleep on the roundabout across the road.
Sadly the regularity in the afternoon had to be cancelled due to rock falls blocking the road and we had a pleasant drive through the valley of the Luna, with miles of spectacular scenery. We ended the day at Ponferrada and that night had a very good meal, finished off with the first of many Spanish sized brandies! Tom swears that we only dropped 15 minutes on the route back to the hotel (walking of course!) Day 3 We started the day with a medal section, that took us through the remote Ancares Leoneses mountain area and passed through villages that cannot have changed much for hundreds of years. The second check point of this section was about 2000 metres at the top of a mountain. This was not only spectacular, but as there was an absolute gale blowing, the pee stop had to be well planned! After the medal section, we passed through the hamlet of Cebreiro, a traditional stopping point on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and the only place that I have ever seen road signs, which, when translated mean 'Caution, Pilgrims' After the lunch stop (we did manage to have some this time) we had a fairly tough regularity section which finished with a run through the spectacular Gorges of the Sil. The day ended with a long transit to the historic city of Santiago de Campostela. I was very pleased to see that after changing our system slightly, we were getting more accurate and only dropped one second on the day. This helped our climb up the results and we were now in 7th place overall with five days still to go.
I made the only two real bloomers of the rally on this section. Tom had told me to expect a tight left turn and given me the distance to go. I had totally forgotten the distance and turned left at the next road, which turned out to be someone's drive. With a bit of high speed reversing we were back on track only to find a Time Control round the next corner, eight seconds late (groan!). A few miles further on, we came to a Time Control situated at the back of a triangle junction. Tom was saying "turn left" and for some ridiculous reason I turned right. Sorting that out cost us another 4 second penalty. I was by now totally demoralized, having made two such stupid mistakes within a few minutes of each other. Anyway, we were now getting low in fuel and headed on through the maze of single-track roads and almost medieval villages to our planned fuel stop. We had not gone more than a few km when we came to a village with the local inhabitants manning a roadblock. For some reason that we never did find out, they would not let us through. Now we had a problem. We had been following the tulip directions through villages and roads that were too small even to be marked on our map and we had not a clue where we were. Tom knew that over to the west somewhere there was a main road, so with our fuel gauge now reading empty and no compass, we headed off to try and find the main road and some fuel. Luckily we were successful in both and a very relieved crew made the lunch stop on time. After lunch, we were off to the afternoon regularity, which was almost as difficult as the morning, although this time I did not make any silly mistakes and ended the day hoping that we had not dropped too many places. We arrived in Vila Real to find that far from losing places, we had actually gained one. The day had claimed many scalps and crews had been dropping out of Gold Medal positions like wildfire, leaving ourselves and only 17 others still with a chance of the coveted Gold.
After lunch, we headed out of the valley to the next regularity. This started with a very steep climb with hairpins every 50 metres and the road surfaced with wet leaves! We set off and spent most of the time with the poor old Healey sideways and scrabbling for grip. We reached the top after about a couple of minutes going very quickly, when lo and behold a time control. Locked all four and we stopped over the line a second early, while most of the other crews dropped ten or more seconds! In fact the only car faster than us was the big Jaguar 3.8 Mk2 of Geoff Stewart who was two seconds early. Now that must have been a sight to see!
We were now up to fifth place overall and still in a Gold Medal position, so morale in the Laird/Bishop camp was high. But with three days of competition still to go we knew that there would be no relaxing. Day 6 We had been warned that this was going to be one of the toughest days of the rally. We had an early start and got going just after dawn with a link section to the monastery town of Arouca, where we started a medal section. This led us into a tough little regularity before lunch. We started the regularity and quickly climbed up into thick cloud with visibility down to fifty metres or less. Having been a pilot for some time, I felt quite at home, but quickly realized that you cannot drive a Healey on instruments alone! But we managed well enough. Time was tight and we knew that we had to get to the lunch stop in good time, to fuel up and plan for a very twisty medal section that afternoon, that had no fewer than four time controls and two passage controls. JB, the Clerk of the Course, was obviously upping the pressure.
Luckily Tom had his head in his maps and stopwatches and didn't realize what had happened, nor did he notice the beads of sweat on my forehead. Sadly this day claimed the works Healey of Lady Pauline Harris, which skidded on the loose surface and hit a bridge parapet. The crew was all right if a bit shaken, but the car was too badly damaged to continue. The last medal section was tough but manageable and brought us to the town of Coimbra, where we were to spend the night. We were feeling very happy: we'd dropped just one second on the day and the Healey was still going like a train, but with many more rattles than before. With only two more days of competition left, it looked as though we would survive without too much falling off. Day 7 was to be the last full day of rallying. We had another early start, with a short link section to the beginning of the first regularity. This was in the mountains of the Sierra da Lousa that provided some incredible sights and fine driving. We then had a long transit of about 150 km to the lunch stop at Mafra, where there was a most magnificent monastery.
We left Sintra to drive direct to the Grand Prix Circuit at Estoril via the Cabo do Roca, which is the most westerly point of mainland Europe. About a km out of Sintra we were again in nose to tail traffic. After crawling along for about five minutes, we were overtaken on the inside kerb by the large 4x4 of the Portuguese camera crew. Assuming that they knew what they were doing (Portuguese drivers are legendary), we quickly slotted in behind them and succeeded in passing most of the traffic right up to the gates of the circuit!
As there was no speed control on the exit lap, I am afraid that the 'purple mist' descended and I had a wonderful time! A circuit definitely designed with Healeys in mind. We had had a good day, with wonderful weather and an exciting drive round the Estoril circuit. We arrived back at our hotel in Estoril to find that we were now in second place overall and still had our Gold Medal. As you can imagine, several beers went down without even touching the sides! Day 8 was the last day of the rally and was to be a timed test in Monsanto Park in Lisbon, where the old Monsanto Grand Prix was run. The final lap record of this track was set by Stirling Moss in a Cooper back in 1959. The test consisted of a twisty 2 km section of road with a cone ‘garage’, some cone zigzags and two 'stop astride lines' followed by a belt to the finish. Tom and I decided that as we were now second and still had our Gold Medal, this was not the time for histrionics! We had to be fast enough to stay inside the Gold standard of 15 penalty points or less, but be careful enough not to hit any of the cones. We reckoned that our main threat was going to be the Ferrari, which was in our class and was definitely capable of going faster than the Healey. We set off to the park in a convoy of cars behind a Police motor cyclist, who was going to escort us to the Park. The problem was that he insisted on driving at about 12 mph. After about ten minutes of this, the Healey was getting very hot and started to misfire badly. At that moment Nick Pryor drove up the outside and told the Policeman to get a move on. The speed then increased to 20mph, which just about saved our bacon. Thank you Nick!
The rally ended with a drive down to the Finish and a reception at the City Hall hosted by the Mayor. We were told that our result on the test had put us into equal first place overall with the Mercedes of Anthony and Carolyn Ward. As you can imagine, it was a very proud Healey crew that went to the prizegiving ceremony that evening to collect our cups and the elusive Gold Medal. To sum up. I think that HERO organized a very good rally. It was a bit sad that so much had to be cancelled or changed, but this was out of the control of the organizers, who coped admirably and put in many hours of extra work to give us new and interesting routes. The new time keeping and scoring system seemed to work very well, and apart from one day when a timer malfunctioned, was extremely accurate. All in all, an event which Tom and I thoroughly enjoyed and, given the chance, would definitely repeat. As for the Healey. What can I say? They were very successful rally cars in the sixties and, if properly prepared, must still be one of the best and most rewarding historic rally cars now. SSY 830 took us through a tough rally with some unspeakably rough roads without missing a beat. I look forward to rallying again next year. For details of more classic rallies run by HERO - the Historic Endurance Rallying Organisation, phone the office on 01886 833505, e-mail [email protected], or visit this website. Angus Laird
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It was during signing on that we hit our first major snag. Tom had overlooked his International Driving Licence and the organizers were adamant that we could not start the rally unless we both had one. PANIC! After many phone calls, Tom established that there were only two places within striking distance where we could get a licence, Central London or Guildford. After a bit of head scratching, we decided that it would be possible to divert to Guildford between Passage Controls 01 and 02 and, if we were very lucky, still arrive at the Master Control at Singleton within our time allowance.
After lunch, we had a regularity section, some fairly tightly timed transits and some breathtaking views to finish the first day of the competition at the resort of Fuente Dé in the Picos de Europa.
Day 2 Started from Potes with a fairly long transit, which passed through some spectacular gorges to the first regularity. We had been warned that for the first hour of this section, there was no straight longer that 100 metres! Not only that: it was like driving over a giant wash board with potholes. It was the first real test of how well we had bolted the car together! Another thing that became obvious with all the bends, was that the three cars that started in front of us, two Aston DB5s and a 4.7 litre Tiger were faster on the straights, but no match for the Healey on the corners. This was a problem for us as we were continually catching them up on the tight timed sections. We knew that in order to give ourselves the time buffer that we wanted we would have to overtake them. The Tiger and one of the Astons let us pass without trouble. The other Aston was a bit more difficult, until his exhaust fell off and we got him going again with the help of a wire coat hanger from our emergency kit. After that he was much more helpful!
We arrived at Quinta da Pecheca, the home of Sandeman Port for a very good but incredibly expensive lunch and no freebees! There we saw several cars nursing their wounds and one gentleman modifying the rear wheel arches of Richard Fenhalls' Mercedes with a sledgehammer! The rough roads and tight time schedules were definitely starting to take their toll.
After lunch, it was off to the World Heritage Site at Sintra, with the control situated on the steps of the Royal Palace: most impressive. Unfortunately, being Sunday and a beautiful sunny day, there was a large amount of tourist traffic and we had a long crawl to the Palace. This caused problems for some cars including the E Type of Mike and Jennifer Barnes, which had lost its electric fans. We were somewhat relieved when on reaching the Control we were informed that the regularity had been cancelled. This was going to be held on very narrow roads that were crowded with tourists and would have been a somewhat dangerous exercise.
We were feeling so pleased with ourselves that we totally forgot to establish the position of the timing point on the circuit. As the test involved driving two laps at exactly the same speed, this was rather important, so our result of a one second penalty was a great relief.
We arrived at the start of the test and while we were waiting for our turn, had a quick peek at the cars that were starting before us. The trick was to accelerate away up the hill, stop with all four over a line, reverse into a cone 'garage', and then accelerate like mad on up the course. Seemed OK to us. The flag dropped and I managed a good start, accelerated away, stopped over the line and could I get the b----y thing into reverse? Could I h--l! We rolled back down into the 'garage' and set off again as fast as the poor old Healey could manage. Luckily Tom's track directions were spot on and we made the course in good Healey style, without hitting anything or sliding over lines with all four wheels locked and clocking a time of 146 seconds. We were doubly amazed to be told that we had achieved the second fastest time overall, only being pipped by the very fast Lotus of Paul Ranson. So no penalty points at all. Time for another beer or six when we reached the end!