Peter Horsburgh and Mark Appleton took the outright win in their Mini Cooper S on the Solway Historic Rally on Sunday 21st March, from the second placed Volvo of Dave Hughes and Andy Gibson, both crews paired up for the first time. It was the first round of the new HRCR Historic Road Rally Championship and HRCR Newcomers Challenge which is sponsored by XL Refrigerators and Speedsport Design. Nineteen championship crews in a total entry of 35 started from County Motors in Carlisle in rather damp weather, being led away by last year's winning car, Peter Pratt's TR2.

The Wigton Motor Club ran a very compact route in the area to the E and NE of Carlisle, with 8 special tests and four regularity sections. The regularities were set with long sections, no speed changes and just 9 timing controls in all, but with plot-and-bash handouts to cope with they were not easy for the Newcomers Challenge crews.

The first test was a mile long route through the old roadways and muddy tracks of Hadrian's Camp, where the powerful Minis stamped their mark. Quickest here was Peter Horsburgh on 2:56, closely followed by Geoff Twigg on 2:58.

An hour-long regularity section led to the entrance to Kershope Forest. A seven mile long regularity set at 30 mph through the forest, with the route entirely defined by arrows and No Entry boards, was the highlight of the event for most.

After these regularities, several competitors were becoming suspicious of the accuracy of the organisers' regularity time/speed/distance setting, since the target times for every section were being given as exactly on a whole minute. This was obviously done to make the results easier to calculate, but those that realised what was happening could get some good times by aiming their arrival at the controls exactly on the minute!

Following the third regularity section and three tests at Carlisle Airport, the lunchtime leaders were Geoff Twigg & Graham Carter (Cooper S) on 377, followed by Peter Horsburgh & Mark Appleton (Cooper S) on 384 and David Hughes & Andy Gibson (Volvo 121) on 401. Geoff Breakell & Nigel Raeburn (Alfa Giulia) were next on 409, but with a failed alternator they were wondering whether their battery would get them through the afternoon. The 5th placed local crew of Woodburn and Hargreaves on 429 were unfortunately destined to retire their MGB with clutch problems.

On the first test after lunch, a dash up a driveway into a quarry with a hairpin bend and dash back, Peter Horsburgh would have been fastest but gave away 10 seconds by overshooting the line at the wet slippery downhill finish. So best was Geoff Twigg, followed by Mick Watkins (now in his MGBGT having sold last year's Anglia) and Dave Hughes.

The start of the final long regularity section caught out everybody when one manned passage control saw no cars at all! The instruction N x 0, S x 2, E x 1, W x 5 was confusing until you realised that it meant leaving grid squares by these directions so many times, but you had to sort out the order. Peter Horsburgh's Mini got to the first junction to find all four of the cars in front waiting there plotting. The first 2 cars went left, the 3rd went straight on, so they went right! Most took the obvious route that fitted, but all agreed after the event that the organisers' intended route that nobody spotted was shorter. Several of the front running crews dropped major time here, Peter Pratt/Julie Eaglen loosing nearly 8 minutes and Derek Skinner/Tony Pettie (in the Healey 3000 instead of the A35) over 3 minutes.

The section continued with a string of grid line numbers passing through the area where the easting and northing numbers were the same. Here Twigg and Carter became confused with all the 57s and omitted a small loop, so missing a passage check to their cost.

Back at Carlisle Airport, the three morning tests were repeated (but in the opposite direction) and the event finished with an excellent roast dinner at the Golden Fleece, Ruleholm.

After some confusion with the results, where many crews were erroneously awarded extra passage control penalties, it was eventually put right and Peter Horsburgh/Mark Appleton declared the winners. Mark thus completed a hat trick of three outright wins three weekends running (The Gremlin, The Powderham and the Solway), all with different drivers! Can anybody stop him?

Second was David Hughes/Andy Gibson after a very spirited drive in the big Volvo, despite completing the final tests with only three shock absorbers attached at both ends. Third was the Alfa Giulia of Geoff Breakell/Nigel Raeburn, whose battery just held out to the finish. In 4th place was Geoff Twigg/Grahame Carter, and 5th the Riley 1.5 of Cliff Doe, with son Paul now back in the navigator's seat following his serious car accident last year.

Of the eight Newcomers Challenge crews entered, Mark & Andrew Summers in their Sprite excelled with a 13th overall finish, but it was all very close with Richard Fisher & Neil Lewis 14th overall in the Lancia Fulvia and Edwin & Mark Hunter 15th in their MGB.

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