Registration and scrutineering for the 50 vehicles entered commenced at 12:00 high noon in Spa on
April 21st 2001.
After a driver's briefing at 17:30, everyone eagerly awaited their allocated departure time for
Stage 1 - here the two 289s of David Pilbeam & Graham Fry plus David & Andrea
Butcher.
The start time for each vehicle was 20:00 hours, plus the start number of the vehicle in
minutes.
Many ways were found to kill the time, just one of which was spotting silly Belgian café
names in Spa.
Another way was to admire the many splendid cars about to set off on the journey, here
the Jaguar SS100 replicas of James Binham & Jo Reeley (Suffolk) and Robert
Bousfield & Trevor Seymour (TRAX).
One of the diminutive Liege cars (built by the Event Organiser, Peter Davis), this one
entered by Gari & Do Jones.
A rare Buckland B3 - entered by Cornelius Kloska (who only lives a few kms away
from us, but whom we met for the first time on this event in Spa!) & Arne Ullmann.
A nice paint job on this 7!
Photo courtesy of Peter Cahill
After over eight hours of waiting and wondering what we had let ourselves in for, it was now
time to get the helmets out and study the map and route book for the first stage.
At 20:03, Edward & Ruth Stobbs are sent off in their Duckshover 3 Special (this is a
Citroen 2CV with only three wheels!), with the Liege of Howard Blackwell & John Reeve
right behind them.
The Butcher/Butcher BRA 289 was sent off at 20:12, and the Pilbeam/Fry Hawk 289 followed shortly
afterwards at 20:15.
The first confusion arrived within a few hundred metres of the start, where roadworks and a
diversion in the town centre of Spa ensured the first discrepancies between the "tulip"
description in the route book and real life!
The second hiccup followed another 12 kms further down - the tulips directed us onto the F1 race
circuit of Spa-Francorchamps for two laps, but in reality this was closed (due to the Porsche
Supercup race weekend), so further lateral thinking was required of all navigators to find an
alternative route around the circuit and rejoin the tulip route later.
During the long cold dark night, other problems included a scheduled petrol station that was
closed when the competitors reached it, and the Event Organisers fell asleep and failed to reach
the control station alongside it!
Despite a thrash up the Turkenheim hill climb in the middle of the night in a dense fog, and a
few forays into single track steep hills surrounded by black and large wooden things resembling
trees, the rest of the night departed into a dim mist and the break of dawn brought a new problem
- the scheduled breakfast halt from 05:30 had to be abandoned when it was found that the road up
the mountain to le Markstein was closed, due to heavy snow and black ice. However, it was
very "entertaining" to compare the 10% gradient hill-climbing abilities of the assorted
vehicles - the Butcher/Butcher BRA, with shed-loads of torque and under 35% of the total weight over
the rear 225/60/15 summer tyres was no match for a Liege (with front-wheel-drive and 850cc. Reliant
Robin engine), but still made it a long way further up than the Blair/Freegard TVR Cerbera (despite
its traction control, ABS and 400 bhp!). A close second place (after the snow ploughs) was reported
to be one of the 7s, fitted with a limited-slip-differential.
Having miserably failed to follow the Butcher/Butcher 289 up the 1 in 1 snow covered slope to the
non-existent breakfast stop, the Pilbeam/Fry chariot slid down the slope narrowly not missing the
strategically placed crash barrier, with the resultant modification to the rear off-side back
wing - Gordon... Help!!
Indeed, all marshalls and most of the competitors failed to reach the top of le Markstein;
the only exceptions were the Keith Oldfield & Darren Clagget Citroen 2CV and the
Butcher/Butcher BRA, who achieved the summit with differing approaches. The 2CV team decided
to drive up from the base of the return route; and after discussing the situation with two
snow-plough drivers, the BRA team decided to make a 125km detour around the base of the
mountain .....
.... and stuck very closely to the back end of another snow plough to complete the assault on the
summit from the far side.
The Butcher/Butcher BRA alongside the snow-bound and closed le Markstein Restaurant at 08:10
(the scheduled arrival time was 05:42).
This excursion made the BRA over 2 hours late at the next control point, thus exceeding the
permitted 30 minute window; and although this lost time was made up before the lunch stop at
13:14 (just don't ask how, but hopefully, since travelling at speeds close to that of light, any
radar detection devices will not have been able to record the event on film for posterity or
evidence), the BRA team was thereby excluded from the 13 or so runners who ended the day/night
stage with zero penalty points! The unattended and almost unachievable control stations were simply
discarded from the event, so the other competitors who feably gave up any attempts to reach the
breakfast control point were not penalised - instead, they could drive on leisurely to arrive at
the next control point with time in hand, after a good meal at a local cafe! So much for
initiative and effort, it obviously doesn't pay on this event!
One (legal) way that we made up some of the lost time was to miss out the scheduled visit
around the Sbarro Museum, pausing just long enough outside to grab this photo with the
Transformer (Hawk) Strato's of Jerry Bailey & David Page.
This one is for the TVR (and other competitors behind them!) who followed us blindly through a village
in Southern France - sorry, we just wanted to get this photo of the bridge and river, and didn't mean to
lead you down a narrow dead-end alleyway (not - didn't Carol and Peter give you your own route
books?)
The Butcher/Butcher BRA is unloaded alongside the Emma Stanford & Francie (wife of
Jeremy) Clarkson Caterham 7, after the eventual arrival at the hotel in Aix-les-Bains, just
over 20 l-o-n-g hours from Spa. The Butcher team stopped only twice on the entire journey
- once for fuel (after over 13 hours of continuous driving), and once for a lunchtime snack
(17 hours after leaving Spa!)
After the icy fiasco, the Pilbeam/Fry 289 decided to thrash down the motorway, avoiding most of
the other legs as both occupants were falling asleep at the wheel. That´s what a night stage and
a day stage in quick succession with no sleep will do for you! That and typing this damned report
on a German laptop with german kezboard at 23:30 in the evening!
