The 2nd Moonraker Randonnee by Peter Bradley

(or ..."C'est un parapluie sur le poisson qui derange mon voiture!"
which in English means "Wow, this chalk is funny stuff!")

Imagine if you can a world awash with green lanes. A world with a whole network of interconnecting green lanes where it is possible to drive mile after endless mile off-road, with only short stretches of tarmac in between. A world where these lanes are practically deserted, save for the very occasional walker or rider. Add to this some spectacular views and some world famous antiquities. Well, surprising as this may seem, such a world does exist. It is called Wiltshire, and it played host to the first day of the 2nd Moonraker Randonnee Event on the weekend of the 10th/11th May. If someone were to tell me that Wiltshire had a greater mileage of green lanes than tarmac roads then frankly I would be inclined to believe them.

Enthused by Wally's account of last year's event, a very high proportion of Mud-Splatters turned out for the long trek down to Barford St Martin, a delightful village near Salisbury. They were, in no particular order, Keith and Ian, Kevin and John, Patrick and yours truly, and Steve and Neil. Once there we were to meet up with other Yorkshire entrants in the shape of Geoff Reader and Richard Shipley, and Tim Johnson and co-driver. Quite what the locals thought of this northern rabble which had descended upon them is unclear. How would we shape up in this strange and unfamiliar landscape? Quite well actually ... read on ...

Much use was made of mobile phones and the CB on the way down, as we were rather spread out geographically. Keith and I joined the M18, and word came through on the CB (via the mobile) that Kevin's truck had been attacked in the car park of Woodall Services. The perpetrator of this heinous crime was a Ford Granada, and it was not a good career move on the Granada's part as it naturally came off worst from the altercation. Being a Geordie, Kevin, (quite rightly I thought), tried to claim that the damage to the roof of his Ninety had been caused by said collision. This was stressing-out the Granada's driver who was trying to come to terms with the substantial damage to his own motor. We stopped for refreshments here and I indulged in a rather lavish hot chocolate drink topped with whipped cream or something. Very nice.

Suitably fortified we rejoined the M1 southbound, now a group of three vehicles, (Messrs. Maddison and Redpath were to follow on later, as is customary). Patrick was taking his turn in the pilot's seat and after half an hour of playing with the gadgets I was, frankly, beginning to get bored. Fortunately, Keith came to the rescue by deciding to re-calibrate his terratrip in situ and on the move, thus providing us all with something meaningful to do for an hour or so. I doubt that the final calibration was accurate, but it certainly passed the time of day. And it did prove to us that our own terra was accurate, against both the GPS and Kevin's. What a shame then that having a sound terra reading was to prove so worthless on the event proper.

We finally found the Barford Inn at about 8:30pm, and a perfectly acceptable spot it was too. For a start off they were serving draught Hall and Woodhouse Tanglefoot bitter, a most splendid ale which is not entirely unknown to me. Indeed, I once made the gravest of errors by drinking five pints of said brew in about 75 minutes. Slipped down a treat it did, as did I, shortly afterwards. This inn also had the unusual distinction of having an Israeli barbecue every Friday night, come rain or shine. Now I know the Israeli's have had their fair share of trouble and strife over the years, but I didn't think it had come to this. To a man we chose more traditional fare, shunning the barbecued Israeli despite being surrounded by strange talking and Tanglefooted Wiltshireites.

Steve and Neil arrived late into the evening and in very up beat mood. In fact, Neil's mood was a little too up beat for my liking, and as the evening drew to a close the conversation turned to that of how we could best allocate the sharing of the rooms. The suggestion that Neil and Steve should share with Patrick and me brought back memories of the first Bulldog Trophy at Wolsingham, where I had the misfortune to require an overnight bivvy on a camp bed in this redoubtable pair's room.

The experience had left me mentally scarred, (my psychiatrist has decreed that I will never recover as long as I continue to off-road with them), and I was determined to avoid repeating it at all costs. In the end, Neil shared with Geoff and Richie in the next room, and Patrick and I got off lightly with a lone Maddison, who was tired and thus on his best behaviour.

The same cannot however be said for Redpath who, in true marauding Scot style, caused a fair old rumpus, excerpts of which I have on film. Unfortunately, my punishment for recording these events, for all to enjoy, was the rapid and extremely violent removal of my underpants, which eventually gave way under considerable force to become two neat halves, (better they than me, though it was a close run thing for a moment or two). Steve later advised me that the mistake I made was "to try and run away". I'll keep that in mind next time Steve, though quite what would have happened if I'd stood my ground doesn't bear thinking about. Whatever, all photojournalists encounter dangerous situations ... just ask Kate Adey. Meanwhile, and by way of revenge, the Editor gets the Photo-CD, as soon as possible.

I awoke at about five. Conscious of the fact that I had an X-rated film in my possession, I thought it prudent to be first up. I had a wash and a shave (unusually). Dawn was just breaking, and Steve and Patrick were still comatose. I left the room via the corridor where I spotted two dead bodies on the floor. To my amazement they later resurrected themselves to become Kevin and John. I went down to the car, fired up the motor, and took the Ibex out for 8.5K's of sightseeing. Returning to the car park I had a little wander about, pausing for a second to enjoy the sunrise. The Defender 110 I was stood next to suddenly made a primeval noise. Turning sharply I spotted the door catch moving slowly, then the door itself swung open with an eerie creak. Inside a dark shape was struggling to move about in the gloom, and I quickly realised that whatever it was, it was trying to shuffle towards the opening in front of me. Within an instant I was confronted by the most unnerving sight: The creature was humanoid all right, but not, in my opinion, of this planet. It then removed it's bobble hat and I was relieved to discover that "it" was in fact the roving reporter for Global Off-Road Magazine. He had slept all night on top of his recovery ropes and off-road kit so I suppose he was entitled to look a bit rough.

After breakfast we had scrutineering. Scrutineering quite simply consisted of a large and hairy Wiltshireite counting the number of wheels on the vehicle, which had to total exactly four. Ours did total four, luckily, and so we passed. This pleased me greatly as I was not about to argue with the scrutineer. I had spotted him at the barbecue the previous evening and anyone who dines on roast Israeli can have his own way in my book.

We were running as vehicle number nine, which meant, (you guessed it), we started ninth. On or around section 4, (this is about 1600 metres), we met Keith, who was parked up next to the track. "Hey Keith, what's up?" "Have you got a spare wiper blade and CB aerial?" "Oh yes, we always carry half a dozen with us, y'know in case they get nicked. What's happened anyway?" "They've been nicked". "Ahh. Right."

After a kilometre or three we were beginning to formulate a couple of notions. Firstly, that the road book was wrong. Well wrong. Secondly, that the white stuff on the road that looked like stony pebbles was in fact wet chalk, and was err ... rather slippery. And thirdly, that this event was meant to be tackled at speed: The figure of 300K had been bandied about for day one. It started to dawn on me; a Randonnee is a cross between a day's gentle green-laning and the Network-Q RAC Rally, with the emphasis on the latter. This event was going to be "toe down", and I was feeling very fragile. I pressed on as fast as I dare. We seemed to be finding a workable pace, but unbeknown to me at the time, my co-driver was capable of much faster speeds.

We blobbed on an early section, overshooting the junction in decisive fashion, and it was here that an old Toyota Hilux overtook us: Don't laugh, this guy was to go on to win. Then there was general confusion as a whole melee of competitors found a field full of cows. We emerged from this bovine encounter a place or two ahead, but then dropped back one when I had to take a leak a few miles further on. Much of Saturday is, quite frankly, a blur due to the pace which we had to keep up. However, a few memories remain with complete clarity. Hammering down one lane Patrick suddenly shouted, "There's Stonehenge!". "Where?" said I, peering into the distance. "There, on your right". And there indeed it was, in a field about 400 yards away. Crossing a "live" military runway was a novel experience, as was sharing Salisbury Plain with the Army's heavy armour. At one point in time we were so lost that we simply drove down the first RUPP that we came across. This appeared to terminate in the front garden of a small cottage, where an upright rear 90 propshaft was doing sterling service as a bizarre ornament amongst the aquilegias. I took this to be a bad omen, and we exited stage right and post-haste.

Wet chalk is very slippery stuff and we had several excursions from the desired route. Our first was probably our most geometrically spectacular, completing a neat 180-degree at about 35mph. Later on I stuffed it into a wire fence from about 40mph, fortunately without damage to either fence or Ibex. At about a third way through Etape One I realised that I was about to fall into a deep slumber whilst attempting to pilot the Ibex down a narrow country lane. This would clearly do nothing to help our overall position so I switched sides with Patrick and took over the left half of the motor where all the navigation gadgets are. After about 30 seconds it became clear that this was in fact the "hot seat" on a Randonnee, and my chances of having a little snooze were now nil. By comparison the driver has an easy time, merely having to go flat out and obey directional instructions. Patrick "Kankunen" Smart excelled at this and we began to make progress up the field. We would have made even better progress had those instructions been correct. To give you some idea of the furious pace that was required we never once engaged low range on day one, third or fourth high being the preferred gears.

To say that the vehicle took a hammering would be a gross understatement. On one lane over Salisbury Plain we were touching sixty, on others forty, (mph not kph), when we would suddenly hit a big pothole or deep corrugation. The contents of the back frequently made a bid for the space in the front, and the contents of the front (especially me) frequently tried to exit via the roof, saved only by the seat belt. All in all it was an absolute hoot.

Before the start we had been given our "doomsday" envelopes, which were to be opened either in the event of becoming hopelessly lost, or at 7:00pm, whichever came first. The envelope contained instructions on how to get to the overnight stop, and opening it carried a heavy penalty. With just four kilometres to go we were intercepted by the finish marshal. "Give me your envelope and I'll sign you off". "Not a hope mate", says I, "We've not driven all this way to miss finishing by 4 K's. Take a hike". "You're finished. This is near enough. Let me sign the sheet and then you're officially finished". Patrick was keen to hand it over, (but then again he had sight of the fuel gauge, which read "vapour only - feed me"), but I was deeply suspicious. We handed it over and got signed off. At the end of day one I think we were lying fifth, behind Steve and Neil, Geoff and Richie, a funny looking Daihatsu from Cheshire, and the lead vehicle ... the old Toyota Hilux. It had been a strange sort of day.

"Do you want to follow me to the overnight stop?", said the lad who had signed us off. "Er ... yes please, seeing as we haven't got a clue where we are. Where are we going?". "Gloucestershire. Follow me". Ask a silly question ... Two seconds later he drove his Range Rover into the stationary Ibex, much to the detriment of the Rangie. This event was beginning to take on surreal overtones, a feeling which was reinforced when five miles down the road we turned a corner and arrived in the village of Avebury. Maybe he was a Druid or something.

We finally reached our overnight halt at about 8:30, a rather large and splendid farmhouse B&B somewhere near (I think) Ross-on-Wye. Our allocated bedroom was generously proportioned, and frankly it needed to be as it had to accommodate a whole solicitors' practice ... Maddison, Redpath, Reader, Shipley, Bradley and Smart. The bathroom was only marginally smaller than the planet Jupiter, and it rather usefully included one of those low-level sinks for washing your boots in. This appliance is named after the French word for a wellington, (un bide), and thus is called a bidet. Strange that they don't seem to have caught on in the north, where muddy footwear is commonplace.

Outside in the barn there was a (free) barbecue in full swing, along with a makeshift bar which, sadly, was not free. Munching away on our burgers and chicken we were approached by a figure vaguely familiar to me. "OK, now I understand that someone in your group had his underpants ripped off last night? Who would that be?". This, dear reader, is the level to which Global Off-Road Magazine are prepared to stoop in order to get a story. I implore you, do not buy this publication, this product of the gutter press. Pass it by, as you would the Sunday Sport, and read only homely offerings such as Mud-Splats and LRW. I did my best impression of a Conservative MP and gave him my terse reply: "No comment".

It was about 10:30pm, I think, when the sole foreign contingent came in, a likeable Frenchman called Frank. Frank had a permanent smile on his face and it was not difficult to see why ... he had cunningly ignored his "doomsday envelope" preferring instead to organise his own private one-entry night safari. The barbecue was re-charged for Frank, and shortly afterwards the "solicitors" sought refuge in their giant bedroom.

Line-up for day 2.

I was really looking forward to the Sunday. The day's events were to take part in the woods used on the Webster Trophy, and therefore some seriously taxing terrain was promised. As it turned out, Sunday was to prove a bit of an anti-climax. There were some nice gloopy bits but by and large we were running about on fairly well made forest tracks, and to compound the frustration the road book was still wrong. Even the promised "trialling, French-style" was a bit of a disappointment. Here I had visions of us having to tackle muddy sections on an old bicycle, with a black beret up top, and a string of onions around our necks. Alternatively, maybe the canes would support tiny impaled croissants to be gathered up by the crew as they drove the course, leaning perilously out of the vehicle, prize for the most croissants collected. In the end it turned out that a French trial is just like a British trial, except that the gates are numbered the opposite way around. The course of just 10 gates had been set up on the most rutted bit of wet clay around, and thus steering was simply impossible. You just dropped into your chosen set of ruts and proceeded down the track like a Blackpool tram. The fact that the gates were numbered back to front made no difference to us as our tramway lead straight to the terminus at gate 5, where we promptly collected our penalty.

The event was to finish at lunchtime, rather prematurely I thought, but nonetheless on a real high note: The wheel changing competition. Oh how I love these little wheel swapping bashes, especially against the clock, on alloys, and with everything liberally coated in thick mud. Anyone who has seen the back of a fully kitted Ibex 240 will agree that space is at a premium, and therefore every piece of equipment has to have its own special place. Unfortunately, our place for the hi-lift jack is in front of and underneath everything else. We side-stepped this little problem rather neatly ... by cheating ... and borrowed Tim's 5 foot hi-lift. This in turn created another headache when we discovered that it would not fit in the back. The quick solution here was to stuff it in the front, diagonally, across the driver and co-driver. By now it was our turn, and a marshal duly poked his head in through the window. "Do you always carry your hi-lift there?" "Yes, we do actually. We find it gives us excellent accessibility should we have to do something irritating like ... changing a wheel in a hurry." "Well it's not safe like that." "Rubbish. Of course it's safe ... we're BOTH holding onto it!" We managed a time of 7 minutes 20 seconds for our pit stop which admittedly is not good, but is not that bad considering that one particularly uncooperative wheel nut alone accounted for 4 minutes 30 seconds of the total.

There now followed a period of inactivity, as fellow entrants arrived and one by one gleefully began their own wheel changes. It was Keith, once again, who sensed that we were getting bored and were desperately in need of entertainment. Showing no regard for the detrimental effect it would have on his own position, he selflessly allowed his vehicle to fall off it's jack during his wheel change, whilst simultaneously trampling the wheel nuts into the mud. Keith, your sense of humour is excellent and your timing impeccable!

As the tailenders continued to come in there was a sudden "call to arms" over the radio. Someone was stuck in the woods, and we knew not where, so a small squadron of the more capable vehicles was scrambled into action. We did a "scatter" with Patrick and I checking out the higher side of the forest, but there was no sign of any disabled motors in our sector. Eventually Steve and Neil found the casualty and radioed their position as best they could (153rd tree from the left, turn right). It was French Frank and he was still smiling.

Back at the farmhouse we were treated to a buffet lunch and a long and tedious wait while the results were correlated. The northern contingent was huddled around a single table and the one-liners were coming thick and fast. In the end we were all ready to laugh at anything but my own personal favourites were:-

"When you buy a tyre off Redpath's they only lease you the air in it" (Steve).
"Whaa that's apt! Look, mugs!" (John, referring to the commemorative drinking vessels being presented to the marshals).
And, as the same marshals crouched and shuffled to pose for a three row "team" photograph, Richie's sublime "If there's any sh***ing going on, we want in on it".

Prizegiving seemed to take an age, mainly because most entrants received a prize of some description. The guy with the Hilux won, probably because he didn't have a terratrip. Geoff and Richie came second, with Steve and Neil hot on their heels a point or two behind. The Cheshire Daihatsu lads were fourth. I forget the exact placings after this but Kevin, Tim, and Keith were all in the top half, with Patrick and me finishing about 12th or 13th (memo to Patrick - steel wheels - and soon). It was an impressive prize table and those finishing near the top were well rewarded.

The Moonraker represents excellent value for money, and the chance to experience the flavour of a French Event without crossing the Channel. It is not the Warn Challenge and you don't need an Ibex, or even a Defender, to take part in it. But it is fun and you could take the whole family along if you so wished (one chap did, including both young sons and the two family dogs). Thanks to Chris Hewitt and his team of helpers, and please Santa ... give him an accurate terratrip for Christmas.

Peter Bradley ©

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