Day 5

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Day 5

© Kay Drury 2001-2004

Last updated
27 July 2006

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Monday 29th October

Day 3 of the Navigational Rally
Hotel - Modigliana - Pianetto - Ridracoli - Capaccio - Hotel

Another early start as this was the day we were heading off for the mountains. The day started out really foggy, and we were beginning to think we wouldn't be able to see anything when we got there, but as we went higher up the fog disappeared and the sun shone through. It ended up being quite a hot day.

The mountain roads were great, lots of hairpin bends. The first checkpoint was in a little village and we stopped right in front of a bridge leading through the town walls, really quaint. We initially thought that we would be stopping there after we'd crossed the checkpoint on the other side of the bridge, it would have been nice to look around a bit, but we then discovered that we had to carry straight on after crossing the line.

	The next stage was great fun, and Karen decided that it was a good place stop to take some pics of the cars going down a steep hill and round a hairpin bend. She needed pics of cars doing the rally stages for the mag and it's difficult to compete yourself and take pics of others at the same time.
We'd been doing very well (for us) with our navigation and arrival times for the last few stages, so we thought we'd have plenty of time to spare getting to the next checkpoint. Famous last words!		It was about this time that I really started to wish that I had Baby with me - every time I heard the gurgle of a Janspeed exhaust (and there seemed to be a lot of cars with them) or saw a Mini with an open full length sunroof I had pangs of longing, and guilt for leaving her behind!
	We got back into Sput with what we thought was plenty of time to get there, only to get stuck behind a slow moving vehicle with no possibility of overtaking it on the narrow mountain roads, and then missed the turning to the checkpoint. We had to turn round and go back, then try to pass all the other Minis parked up waiting to go over the line. The road was really narrow so it was extremely difficult to squeeze past them all to get to the front. Needless to say we missed our time and crossed the line late.

The next stage took us to Ridracoli, where there is an enormous dam There was a special stage before we went up to the dam, this one was more straightforward, we had to cross the checkpoint line and then cross another line further on exactly 7 seconds later. That wasn't too bad, and we thought we'd got the hang of the stopwatch - at last! We then drove up the hill to the dam and parked all the Minis along the top of it. We then had time to wander around and climb up the hill to get some pics.

The checkpoint for leaving the dam was down the bottom of the hill, so we had to get back down in good time to leave. It was at this stage that we began to feel just how competitive some of the Jobbers were, with the people in the cars behind us loudly discussing the fact that we needed to leave at least quarter of an hour before the due departure time to get down the hill. They seemed to be constantly nervous that we'd not move when they wanted as we were parked in front blocking everyone in. We obliged and ended up sitting in Sputnik for ages down the bottom.

After leaving the dam we headed back to Capaccio for lunch, more breakfast food (cheese and ham). After lunch we left on time, again despite the fact that the cars parked behind us were sitting in their cars far earlier than they needed to. There was another special stage on departure, another straightforward one where we had eight seconds to cross the second line after passing the first. We were then free to follow the route back to the hotel without time constraints - it felt almost like we'd been let out of school early! We were going to wait for our friends and travel back in convoy, but we decided we needed some petrol so drove off to get a drink for Sput. We managed to find a petrol station that didn't accept credit cards (except Bancomat) and had an automatic pre-payment system. They did have another machine that took cash, but our problem was that we did not have a clue how much petrol Sput needed. Because of the problem with his petrol gauge he often appeared to be empty when he still had half a tank left, so we had visions of putting in too much money and having him overflow. We decided to just stick 10,000 liras worth of petrol in (about 5 litres) and then fill up again on the motorway. By this time we decided we'd just get straight back to the hotel without waiting for our friends.

It was still fairly early when we arrived back at the hotel, so when the others got back to the hotel they left Cybil with the service crew, as she'd started having problems with her exhaust on the mountain roads, and then phoned us. We all headed off to Imola town for the first shopping and sightseeing opportunity we'd had so far. We didn't do much of either in actual fact, we just found a nice little bar and sat outside and had a few beers (Karen had Coke as she was driving). We felt quite relaxed at last for the first time since the rallying had begun.

We returned to the hotel and checked up on Cybil and saw some of the other sick Minis (including one that had had an accident on the second day of rallying). That night we found that despite missing one checkpoint, we'd gone up to 64th place on the scoresheet - we felt that was a great achievement after all of our problems.

Karen and I were both totally exhausted that night, and knew that the next night would be a late one as there was going to be a celebration dinner on the last night at Imola. We were both yawning our heads off during dinner, so departed soon after to get some sleep.