2003 Snowman Rally

Its Fri morning cold and bright, 7 car club members meet at Fishnish and set off for Inverness. 3pm arrive at stage start to check it out .We are told there is a bit of snow and ice there was! 2.5miles of it.This allowed Steve time to reflect why he had volunteered to be Stage Commander but after a worrying night he obviously did eventually fall asleep as having told everyone to be there by 8am LATEST who was late!! offering all sorts of excuses.We believe you Steve? A testament to the strength of the car club now was the fact that 20 car club members with 10 friends TOTAL 30 people ran the 1st stage of the event ON TIME in freezing conditions -9C at the start and throughout without major incidents apart from Johns drunken spectators near the stop line. An awful lot of cars went off but all got out eventually under their own steam.The stop line at one point resembled a KWIK FIT on a sat afternoon with cars littered all over changing punctures straightening bodywork trying to fit plastic to windows and even trying to change a cam belt.There were a lot of spectators sreaming in from the stop line and also a lot at the bridge with Alan and Colin but they did a great job controling them most of them though only got as far as the hairpins and I wish some of them hadn't 10.30 am and about 6 youths totally smashed out of their minds abusing both male and female marshals and spectators with verbal and physical abuse. I had the job of sorting them out and must admit I didnt relish it. One spectator came to my aid and escorted the last drunk out of the forest perhaps a little overzealously but he wanted to watch more of the rally. The rest of the stage ran smoothly and by 12.30 we set off to help on the last stage.We thought we had a lot of spectators in the morning but I was not prepared for what we saw later. Steve had gone to deliver boards to stage 5 when he heard it was closed for spectators so came back to us and decided to give up his radio post and come and help us at the spectator area he then proceeded to miss the incident with Callum Guy at that location, well done John Bell and Drew who had the job of sorting it. It was a good job we got there early and is a salutery lesson for all. We arrived before the spectators, took one look at the junction and proceeded to tape the area with large box junctions specially built to control the expected numbers and a further 300yds of tape to keep them safe. As we finished they started to arrive in their thousands. I estimated over 3000 either stayed with us or walked up to other points but we never had any problems and eventually they all left very happy and took all their litter home or left it in the bin bags provided by Keith, nice one. The stage was supposed to start at 3.30 but finally got underway at 4pm by 4.30 we had the accident which delayed us over an hour so it was now dark! but a lot of the spectators stayed till the bitter end so by 7pm we finally left after 12 hours in sub 0 temperatures it was a long cold hard day, but I and Iam sure Steve was immensly proud of the MULL TEAM who did a very professional job with great authority and humor, the radio crews were all superb and a comment was passed to me from a very experienced crew who did not know who the TOB radios were but stated it was a priviledge to work with you. Tanks to you all from Ian Campbell clerk of the course. I hear that the marathon day had only just begun back in Inverness and the party really started and I believe Fred won the prize for LAST TO BED 9.10am why bother Fred! Congratulations for finishing what must have been a hairy ride in those conditions you got one hell of a cheer at junc 23 on the last stage. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did and thanks again John and Steve

	Norman Walker and Fred MacLean being flagged away from SS1 Rogie by Alan Robson and Keith Cowan
	Eddie O'Donnel Snr & Jnr being flagged away from SS1 Rogie by Alan Robson and Keith Cowan