R.A.C Adventure 2023

We are finally home and unpacked from a fantastic week away at the Rodger Albert Clarke rally in the UK. We left Wednesday 22nd in the dead of night, skulking away from our loving families and warm beds . Ahead was 5 nights of somewhat extreme conditions and wild camping. We refused to organise somewhere to stay. Adventure all the way.

Day one was great fun travelling with 4 vehicles. 2 campers and 2 pickups with roof tents (real men as Damien and I call it). After marvelling at the cars in scrutiny for a few hours and offering my autograph to Petter (he seemed surprised) we had to find a place for dreamy dreamy nighty snoozy snooze. Being the idiots we were and being hoplessly Irish we chanced on. To our amazement we landed on the outskirts of the famous Walters Arena. Haunted as we are we met rally officials and ended up camping right in the middle of the stage. We agreed to a bit of marshalling for one day and we got a treat when the cars arrived. Our first night stage outside the car in quite a while. It was a bit “wow”

Night 2 was us being ultra jammie again as we pulled off the road and into a tidy little spot in a bit of secluded forestry. We learned later that Myherin was a few miles in on the same road. By the luck of the gods it was, and a great bit of fun was had in a crazy spot with almost no people. We found out after, that security was on the gate in the very early morning but we, like little worms were already inside and the area we had was “no spectator access”. How bad we said and proceeded to make friends with some Welsh Turbine technicians.

Leaving that stage we knew we had a big dirty drive from mid Wales to just above Carlisle. We arrived in the Glengap stage with some handy map work by Damien. It was after midnight where we found space deep inside the forest to set up camp. Unfortunately we had no reception on phones which was a pity as it coincided with the Sligo Pallets Forestry rally Championship Prizegiving in Sligo and we would have loved to keep up with the shenanigans as Joe and Pat collected our second in class 11f prize. Fecking bridesmaids we were. It was a brisk night which flirted at times wit frigid temperatures as low as -6.

Thankfully the diesel heaters performed well and other than me pissing my pants at Damien running out of heater fuel in the middle of the night we again slept well. We enjoyed the rally that day and got 2 stages before the trek to the Kielder forest area.
The campsite that night was truly epic but again quite cold and we rose early to pack up and hike into the stages. It was only then we discovered we had parked on a “no camping” sign. “Shite” says us but too late at that point so on we trucked and parked with arses hanging off the road hoping the 4wd would sort us out when it came time to leave. Again we had a great spot but the fire was gone out in a lot of competitors bellies and the action bar 3 or 4 was only ok. The banter and adventure of the camping more than made up for any shortcomings of the action. we even found out why Damien dont buy new overalls very often…..

That said we realised it was our last night in the uk and we set up in a simple forest entrance. We sat again with the fire blazing, and between the weird local ciders and the Tunnocks teacakes, we went to bed happy, just as we got our first proper rain. Leaving the tents up to dry in the morning breeze was a mistake as it pissed down again just as we arrived back to the pickups having watched the morning stage in Pundershaw . Still we had a long road ahead so we left for the long spin to Cairnryan. Thankfully we arrived in plenty time for the ferry and after a good feed and a nice crossing we hit the ground in Belfast at 10pm. We all agreed at this point that t’was time to drop the hammer and get back home to a bed we didn’t have to set up and a nice clean set of clothes and a hot shower. We shed Colin around Kilkenny and the other 3 protagonists split up when we got to cork. Fantastic adventure but no harm at all to be home.