Worth Birkill chalked up a second Championship win by taking victory on the Welsh Rally Retro on the 29/30th April in his Mini Cooper S. He was partnered on this occasion by Dave Harris, regular navigator Robin Cardale being unavailable this time.

The event was based at Brecon in Mid-Wales and the daylight section consisted of jogularities and special tests divided by a lunch break near Llandeilo, all situated in the magnificent scenery of Powys, Dyfed and Glamorgan.

The night section followed recent tradition with a visit to the smooth forest roads of Crychan and the infamous tarmac of the Eppynt Artillery Ranges. A typical Welsh mountain lanes section was followed by a return to Crychan and Eppynt before breakfast and prize giving at Sennybridge.

Welsh Retro Results: Excel or Text

Both Reliant crews on the Welsh Retro have sent in reports........

We were fated not to do the Retro this year! Each time I looked at the car in the week before the rally something went wrong! The brake servo swallowed all the brake fluid, no service kits available so replacement had to be obtained and fitted, then the rear brake cylinder leaked, then a brake pipe leaked, then a wheel stud sheared. On the Friday afternoon the car actually broke down on the trailer! - the solenoid went and I could not get it off the trailer! Drove it up to Wales and replacement fitted late in the evening in friendly farmer's barn. We made scrutineering the following morning but lost first gear on test 5. By test 9 I had almost burnt out the clutch, limped through second regularity and retired at lunch.

Marshalled on control 26 in early hours of Sunday and had a great time! In between watching shooting stars we had cars coming at us from all directions! Half of modern field got w/a and one modern liked us so much he visited us 3 times! Historics seemed more organised, tried to engage the navigators in casual conversation but they kept speeding off!

Our car is now in Slough for cluch repair but gearbox is somewhere in the midlands, hence you will not see us in East Anglia. Come to think of it we had to retire from that rally last year after getting onto first name terms with the course closing car!

Ted & Judy Howles, Reliant Scimitar

This rally was one we were determined to finish, not for points in the championship, but because of something left over from two years ago. The 1998 Welsh Retro was the first rally we did in the Sabre, and our second-ever rally as a crew. Half-an-hour into the night section I misjudged a bend in the forest and stuffed the car into a bank. We limped back to rally HQ with the left front wheel pointing out of the side of the car and retired. We were classed as finishers because we made it back to the MTC, but in our minds we owed ourselves a proper result.

We were still making silly mistakes on this year's Retro; at the lunchtime halt I noticed the calibration on the Brantz was showing 451, and it should have been 461. On the interim results we were close to last, but only 3 minutes behind the leaders. If only we could turn back the clock !

We started the afternoon forest section with the steering wheel nicely lined up with the straighahead position, and after a few memorable bumps and crashes finished it with the wheel rotated 30 degrees to the left when driving in a straight line. There was nothing obviously wrong so we cautiously finished the remaining tests and regularity and went back to the B&B, where we found that the lower right front wishbone mountings were tearing loose from the chassis. A few weeks earlier on the Powderham it had been the lower lefts, and I had been lucky to find a garage late at night willing to help me weld them up.

Once again, our luck was in. The local garage owner let me hire a Mig-welder and after a couple of hours work I felt I could trust the car on the night section if I didn't ask too much of it. We got an hour's sleep and turned up at the leisure centre with half an hour to go. Within a few minutes of entering the forests we were both late and lost. We resorted to using the compass to find tracks heading towards the TC June had picked as our rejoin point, and collected a little train of followers as we headed towards Tirabad. They waited outside the village as we headed down into it to confirm our position, then dutifully tagged on again as we came back out and set off towards TC 9 ( or something ).

Back on our own again we managed a wrong-slot down a 'green' track that started to slope steeply downhill. The car began to bottom on the centre ridge, and I turned around and started back up as soon as we found a suitable spot. Unfortunately this was after the highest point in the centre ridge, and we found ourselves beached before we had gone a car's length back up the hill. There was no way to bounce the car off. The Sunbeam Rapier came down the same track and I was able to flag them down before they came too far, but neither of us had a towrope, so they reversed back up the track while we began to collect small stones from the ground to build a ramp under the offside wheels. After one failed attempt we got the car moving and rejoined the rally at the first petrol stop, having lost about an hour.

Our most stupid mistake of all was to not find out what the code boards looked like. I was expecting white boards with the club name on them, and passed lots of small army-style black plates thinking they were road or clearing identifiers. Which in a way they were, of course.

We had to cut another large portion of the last night leg as we were steadily loosing time on each section, unable to push the car hard enough, and got back to Sennybridge camp after dawn. It was the most desolate rally finish location I have ever experienced. I could not shake off the feeling that we were still out on the Eppynt, occasionally meeting other crews as lost as ourselves. I was plastered with mud and soaked through from kneeling on the ground in our green lane, and we decided to skip the awards and head back to the B&B for some sleep.

Until Tuesday evening we had no idea if we had been classified as finishers at all. It was the most rewarding feeling of the whole rally when I logged into the website and saw a third score had appeared against both our names, and knew that we had achieved what we wanted, to properly finish on the Retro. This might well be toughest rally we do this year, but it was worth it.

Adrian Stapley & June Grant, Reliant Super Sabre