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Mull and The Cheviot
This was the warmest driest Mull on record, with a ding-dong battle for the lead between Callum and Iain Duffy in a Mk 2 Escort and Paul MacKinnon and Ewen McGillivray in an Impreza. These two swapped seconds and answered stage win with stage win, records were broken, bogeys were beaten. It wasn’t settled till Mackinnon spun and broke a wheel a couple of corners into the 22 mile stage that opened the Saturday night leg, giving the Duffys a minute and a half advantage that they kept to the end, and at the finish it was Callum, Paul then Dougi Hall.
Iain and Angus Mackenzie had hired a Fiesta ST for their local event. They went well on Friday night and were up to 9th at the end of the leg, but they slipped to 12th on the daylight stages on Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless, they looked like a safe bet for getting back into the top ten after dark, when the islanders generally cope better than the visitors.
On the way to the Saturday night restart, Iain swerved to avoid a deer on the main road south of Salen, got into a tank slapper and finished upside down in the ditch. Angus was knocked out, and his arm seems to have gone out of the window, and was very battered but amazingly not broken. More gruesomely, he was nearly scalped, with a big flag of skin peeled off his head, probably by the visor of his helmet which he was holding on his knees.
One of the first on the scene was an off-duty fireman servicing for another crew, and he got in there and held the scalp in place to staunch the flow of blood and also hopefully maintain the blood supply to the skin, till the medics arrived.
Anyway, we hear Angus was in the Bellachroy on Sunday night watching Duffy’s in-car, with 34 steel clips holding the top of his head on. They breed them tough in Dervaig, and with touching faith in the healing power of drink.
Best wishes to both the Oggies for a speedy recovery.
What a long year it’s been since our 2009 finish of 12th overall. We’ve still to have the satisfaction of knowing every Tunnocks Calendar will have our pic on display in December 2010.
The target this year was more of the same, but it’s easier said than done !!!
This years route was pretty much the 2008 version, so we maybe didn’t recce as much as normal – and of course we certainly kept within the recce speed limit set by Mull Car Club…… So after a hassle free, relaxing, pre-event scrute and briefing we headed into stage 1 – Glen road to Dervaig then over the hill to Torloisk….!!!!?????
It was a baptism of fire.
From the start, my note reading pace would’ve been hard for Seb Loeb to keep up with, let alone wee Jeck. It must’ve been my nerves – an affliction that appeared to affect a few big guns too – but it was little consolation.
We got about a mile into the stage and I’d have been as well reading out the recipe for Carrot
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