Rally GB 2007

Back in august we were asked if we had any crew going to Wales rally at that time we weren’t sure but said we would so that committed us to go, we asked if they wanted our unit but would cost a fair bit to get it to the UK so the organiser’s said no they would find us a job when we got there, I booked flights to Manchester as no flights into Cardiff at the times good for us and arrived on the Thursday 29th November, drove straight down to Millennium stadium HQ for the rally to get our passes and find out what jobs we had been allocated.

We met the Event safety officer and medical officer who said one of the FIV drivers couldn’t make the event so would we take that roll on, only problem being we had to be on the road at 05.00 the following day to meet up with the stage Paramedic Jean on stage so we agreed and went off to watch the start of the Rally in Cardiff city centre. We stood around watching the start for about 2 hours the temp was about +2 and getting colder so we went back to the hotel.

Next morning Friday 30th we dropped Nigel off to one of the stage safety officers to spend the day with him and the rest of us went to the stage we had a special access pass so we could take the car to get in where ever we wanted, we met up with Jean on Stage Resolfen, the weather was pouring with rain with visibility nearly at zero so we sat in the long wheel base Land Rover for the rest of the day with the heater running, we knew rally cars were passing our junction only by the noise of the engine as the fog was so bad it only cleared for a few minutes at a time but that didn’t seem to slow the drivers down good times were still being achieved.

Saturday 1st I was on the road at 04.00 to meet Jean so that we would be on stage for 07.00 Nigel and John went to Millennium Stadium to help put the timing in for the special stage in the evening, Steve went in the safety vehicle for the day.  I met Jean at her guest house and went to stage Crychan we were mid stage in an area like a natural anthytheartre where about 400 or 500 spectators would be able to watch the stage, we had a large parking area with Lynx rescue and a recovery unit and 2 doctors.  The only bit of excitement we had was a Mitsubishi with a burst water hose which looked like it was on fire the rescue crew attended with extinguishers but they quickly realised it was only steam, the rest of the day passed uneventfully apart from in between stages we had to follow the recovery team to give safety cover when they had to recover cars that had fallen off the side of the track, the tracks through the woods are gravel and it is surprising to see how deep the ruts are after cars have been through our Land Rover was grounding out when we got into the ruts the cars were using. I got back to the hotel about 21.00 and the others got back 23.30 ish, then I shocked them with our wake up time for the next morning 02.00 we had a 4 hour drive to the stage. That was a shock to the system!

We got on the road for 02.15 met Jean and went to the stage Reola but managed to get lost after a police patrol pointed us down the wrong lane which had no turning points for about 3 miles eventually we got to stage with an hour to spare before the fist car, again we headed to a mid stage point to meet up with Hawk rescue and Zodiac recovery, as usual with Hawk Eric and Jean had an abundance of food so we tucked into bacon and sausage rolls for breakfast, which just go’s to show the team work that is around within the rescue and recovery teams on long wet cold rally’s.

The day passed without any major offs with us only going into stage to assess drivers and co-drivers after they had rolled or crashed their vehicles but no major injuries where seen apart from cuts and bruises so we stayed on scene to provide safety cover for Zodiac to extricate cars from the ditches and ventures into the scrubland.  We finished today quite early 17.00 washed the rover on the way back to Cardiff to drop it off at the hire company, then drove back to the hotel for a few well earned drinks.