Drivers rest up in Wick after tough car rally
A SERIES of classic cars filled Wick after one of Europe's toughest car rallies finished up from doing a gruelling 1500-mile trek in wintry conditions.
The Lands End to John O'Groats Classic Reliability Trial was celebrating its 25th year by paying homage to the original route, visiting many favourite test locations and staying true to the heritage of the classic rally.
After departing from Land's End at 7:30am on Saturday, December 6 the top placed cars managed to complete the route in around 75 hours.
Eighty-two cars began the journey, including eight machines in the vintage category for pre-war cars, but just 64 made it to the finish line highlighting just how tough it can be.
Communications director for the event, Tony Jardine, said: "Finishing this rally is an achievement in itself, but to reach the end and achieve gold medal classification takes an incredible effort from driver and navigator.
"To qualify, the two person crews must reach every control in their allocated minute and not succumb to mistakes on any of the off-road speed tests."
1 / 6
2 / 6
3 / 6
4 / 6
5 / 6
6 / 6Six gold medals were awarded in total but Mr Jardine said the "hardest won were surely" those by the two vintage crews of Elliott Dale and Charlotte Ryall along with Stuart Anderson and Emily Anderson.
He pointed out how the father and daughter combo of Stuart and Emily was particularly noteworthy as Emily was a last minute stand in after Stuart's original navigator was taken sick the evening before the rally.
The weather is one of the things that adds an extra dimension of endurance for the open top Bentley crews, of which Stuart Anderson had this to say: “I have never been buffeted around like that in the Bentley before, the wind and rain hit every part of you pushing and pummelling you in every direction. It was not pleasant at all”.
Elliot Dale, who amongst other achievements has rowed across the Atlantic, had a novel approach to dealing with the weather. "In really bad weather like this, I press my nose right up inside the windscreen, of course it gets in the way of the steering-wheel but I can see," he said.