THURSDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2004
On day four competitors left Inverness to tackle and savour further delights of the west coast of Scotland. The only retirement from the previous day was the Stinglhambers in their Austin Healey.
The Beauly Firth played host to the crews en route to the Strathconon regularity, before heading to Wester Ross and it's beautiful, mountainous scenery.
Following coffee at pretty Shieldaig, the last of the morning's regularities challenged all on their way over cloudy Torridon in the direction of the famous Pass of the Cattle. Always a favourite on the Malts, Bealach na Ba was a tale of two cloud formations today. Official photographers, 'Pappy' Johnson and 'Pappy' Pelly-Fry reported almost zero visibility until the wind got up and sent the cloudline flowing above the hills.
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Godfrey's on the way to Applecross
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The route then took crews to the first test of the day, which was at Plockton airfield, where a Le Mans start acceleration test not only tested the speed of the cars but also the driver's athletic capabilities. Hans-Dieter Krönung was heard uttering expletives as the weather worsened with the count at just twenty seconds!
After the test the Boughtons, in car 18 found themselves driving around Plockton a few times after taking a wrong turn out of the control. This is what they told us but we believe they were hanging about hoping to be spotted for an extras roll in the TV series Hamish Macbeth.
The next Main Control before the afternoon's first regularity along the scenic Loch Duich was at the magnificent Eilean Donan Castle, host to BBC hot air balloons and Sean Connery, before climbing up the Glen Shie and into the shadows of the Nevis range.
The next regularity of the day was a short run through Glen Lochy before a test at Torlundy. During this test Mark and Susan Godfrey found themselves frantically searching for cone 'S'. Eventually, they pressed on regardless only to find the cone sticking out of the back of the Redaelli's Aston Martin Le Mans at the end of the test.
At the end of this test car 27, Zilling and Hoelzel's Mercedes Benz 300SE, suffered from a split front left brakepipe 6km from the Control. Our very own fabulous recovery team of, Bill Price and Graham Rood managed to fix it with a ball bearing so they could crawl back to base. Tomorrow they will be finding a local garage to find a new pipe so they can carry on 100% fit.
Onwards then to the final Control and the only Malts stop of the day at the Ben Nevis Distillery, situated on the outskirts of Fort William - the overnight rest halt for our very wet competitors.
The only other mechanical problem we had today was with car 4, which needed its fuel line replacing. Graham and Bill have requested that we tell all competitors to arrange all breakdowns to be in good weather please.
A complete change around sees overall leaders at the end of today as follows;
1st D Baird/J Baird
2nd Karlan/Moland
3rd Bennett/Bennett
