Day Two:
Coylumbridge - Fyvie Castle - Coylumbridge
A route which took crews north-east along increasingly deserted roads, as far as a mid-morning halt at the beautiful Portsoy harbour. Then it was back south a little to Sir George Forbes-Leith's impressive Fyvie Castle estate for lunch and a couple of driving tests through the estate grounds. The day's route through Scotland's most important whisky-producing region was a good opportunity to visit more distillery premises as well. Cragganmore was the first stop, and later in the afternoon on the return leg the Royal Lochnagar Distillery right beside Balmoral Castle was another attraction, and the venue for the final driving test of the day.
Among Gold Medal losers yesterday was Jac Nelleman, who confesses he got hopelessly lost on that test. But congratulations to Ken Burnett and Annabel Jones. The gears of the Alvis jammed in mid-test, but they managed to get the car out of harm's way and allowed the clock to tick on while they removed floorboards, accessed the gearbox, sorted the problem - and restarted from where they left off. Meanwhile several other crews had been passing through the test at full speed. Ken and Annabel finished successfully - with a 16-minute penalty, and honour intact. There are now 13 crews still on Gold standard.
In the Marque Team awards, The SL Allstars have assumed the lead from Very Volvo. Up into third place come Kith and Kin – a team which includes Uruguayan crew Miguel and Ann Porta in their UK-purchased TR4.
In the Ecurie Teams, Mixed Doubles now hold a narrow lead over the Quadruple Maltesers who pulled into second place after Malts Addicts had a bad hair day and dropped right down to fifth.
Meanwhile in the National Teams, Northern Raiders continue to hold sway over Southern Raiders, but with a reduced cushion of around 50 points. It's all brewing up to be pretty interesting stuff.
Dynamic RAC
We often hear stories of the RAC being worth their weight in gold. One HERO member who did his his first LE JOG last year has even changed his subscription to them from one of their competitors - he was so impressed by Paul Gowen's team's work last December. On Sunday, though, the lovely white TR3 belonging to Andrew Heywood had come to grief: failed dynamo. The RAC couldn't help on the spot with a spare, but arranged for their local garage agent to see what could be done. He got in touch with Lucas and a new dynamo would be despatched first thing on Monday. Then things got interesting. To save Andrew time on the rally, he decided to have a search around - and a scrap Hillman Imp yielded the answer. He fitted the TR3's pulley, phoned Andrew to say it was ready first thing on Monday - and then turned up with both it and his entire family 'They want to see the cars' before the rally started out from Coylumbridge. All that for a charge of £12. Not bad, eh?
