Leg Five LeJog 2025, Fort William to John O’Groats

LeJog was back after two years away in 2025, marking its return as a record-breaking rally with incessant rainfall, making it the wettest and therefore hardest for 15 years. Also, two prominent crews broke their own shared record of seven gold medals each, to make it eight!

Iain Tullie and Andy Lane seemed to glide over the torrents of water, mud and potholes that accompanied the wettest one yet, as their Mazda Eunos Roadster effortlessly dealt with adversity whilst others literally sank. The combination of Lane’s driving and Tullie’s innate navigational skills brought them their eighth gold medal each in Europe’s hardest endurance regularity rally which is labelled a ‘Reliability Trial’ for good reason.

Relentless is one description, madness another, or a disease that you catch and can’t shake off. With fifty percent of the field new to LeJog, many were amazed at just how hard, yet addictive the event is and have vowed to return.

With a 1500 mile route from the toe of England in Land’s End to the tip of Scotland in John O’ Groats, this endurance rally is not for the faint hearted, it holds cult status in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland where the bulk of the European entrants hail from, many coming back time and again.

HERO-ERA Competition Director and Clerk of the Course for LeJog 2025, Guy Woodcock and his team make it a special rally that follows the endurance tradition in awarding medals not podiums, but also ensure it has lots of difficult navigation and maybe even some tricks that make it just as hard for seasoned navigators. Guy’s team spent a lot of time rerouting the rally avoiding roads closed by floods or landslip, and yet still managed to retain the bulk of the route and keep all the entrants on their toes.

Guy Woodcock explained that he was happy with 2025, despite the weather! “I think it's been an absolute soaker but a huge challenge none the less, with many happy entrants already lining up for the next one.

“It's been busy for the team with 17 reroutes we had to deal with in total, floods, road closures, tar macing overnight. So, yes, the team have really worked their proverbials off to get it to here. We've lost, I think eight or nine cars. Maybe, you know with some mechanicals, but it's been a tough LeJog for a totally different reason. With 10 to 12 degrees, no snow, no ice, but lots of water, it has been really hard on crews and cars.

“It's probably the wettest one I've done. I think maybe 2017 was wet, but not like this, there's was a lot of standing water, to be fair, it didn't actually rain all the time, but there was so much water on the roads already that it was a big problem.

“There were some standout performances, I think Andy Lane and Iain Tullie were exceptional as they nailed it again for eight gold medals. There was disappointment for Andrew Boland who missed out. Missing a secret check was awful for Andrew Duerden as he and Michael Rodel also lost gold as they fell foul of the same lay by that the Kiffs missed when they lost their gold medal. So it's never over until it's over. Our Bob Rutherford Scholarship winner Miles Fieldhouse was parachuted in half way through to take over navigation in an open top Vintage Bentley in the dire conditions and excelled with driver Shaun Harborne. Shaun dropped a wheel into the soft stuff on the Loch Ness Monster and they were nearly out, except Miles ran off and found a farm house, waking the farmer at 3.00 am and persuaded him to come and tow them out. Luckily the farmer liked old Bentleys!

“There were many new crews and many great stories as they made it all the way to John O’ Groats, for so many it was about reaching the finish line – for others it was a special event for charitable causes.”

The big story was the impressive record breaking by Andy Lane and Iain Tullie to raise the record to eight gold medals for LeJog, which is one heck of an achievement.

Iain; “It hasn't sunk in yet, but we are just delighted to get it to the end, as every year you know, it's a bit emotional. It might be one of the bleakest parts of the country to come to, especially in this weather, but it's always emotional to get here. And, yes you know, we are in another different car, the Mazda which Andy's driven sympathetically and as well as ever.

“I've never known the conditions to be like this, the water was everywhere, I’ve never known anything as wet as this. So just to get here has been awesome again, but eight is great!”

Andy Lane; “No, it's a great achievement, but just like Iain says we are just happy to be here, with everybody else, and congratulations to all the competitors that made it, you know, it’s just huge. Thanks to all the marshals who stood out in this terrible weather, they have been absolutely brilliant, and they're all cheerful. Mind you, we give them chocolates, you know!

“The Mazda is jointly owned by Iain and I, although there were a few earthing problems, it's behaved itself since we sorted it out. It's a new battery in it that wouldn't tighten up on terminals, but it has brought us success in the end!”

John Lomas was on his first ever LeJog, and not only did he get a silver medal alongside Peter Johnson, who has won gold in the past, but John got best new driver on the event at the awards ceremony in Wick. Pete is also in contention for the annual navigator’s championship where they win the coveted Golden Roamer Award and LeJog counts in the annual points.

Peter said; “It was hard. I mean really tough, whilst we've still got the silver medal, we didn’t  have a good run overnight really, so I don't think the points will be enough for the Golden Roamer Award, but then it hasn’t been totally calculated yet.”

John; “From the driver's perspective, it was very, very difficult. Guy said, it would be horrendously difficult, he was right, I managed to find yet another ditch, which was about four foot this time, but Pete drove and I pushed it out, along with a very helpful Marshal in Henry. So yeah, just hard slog. It was certainly extremely wet.”

It was so tough that just four gold medals and three silvers were awarded. But the other golds were earned by some really great team work on both sides of the car in many different conditions, day or night.

Kevin Haselden and Ryan Pickering were quick and consistent on the regularities and tests, despite water often filling the footwells of the Mini Cooper S. Both have had gold before, but Ryan’s problem will be with his daughter when he gets home. She told her Dad not to bother with gold as he already had one of those, she ordered a silver so she has the complete set at home!

Mark Godfrey and Martyn Taylor were really impressive as they took their gold medals in Mark’s MGB. Mark said: “ I believe it’s been hard earned. We've got it now, and it's been an outstanding event. I think the weather's been against us and made it much tougher, but it’s very well run and organized by a fantastic group. There were some great sections in Wales, on Saturday, although the wipers haven't been off since Saturday morning. The longest

we've had them off is about an hour!” Martyn was so good in his navigation that he won the Clockwatcher’s Award for the best navigator on LeJog this year.

Eric Michiels from Luxembourg and Belgian navigator Aswin Pyck, were just brilliant and won gold medals in Eric’s Porsche 924S, which even has a LeJog licence plate!. Eric, as ever, waxed lyrical about medals and LeJog, comparing Spandau Ballet’s song in the 80s, ‘Gold’ to him and Aswin winning their own gold medals again.

“It's an amazing feat. And I have to say people should realise what the two guys in an old car can suffer to achieve this gold medal. It was really, really tough. It involved a lot of stress and a lot of fear of losing out in leg three, like four or leg five. But yeah, we kept the spirits high, and here we are as well. What an event!

Equally there had been crews who were in the gold and silver medal rankings but just dropped out over the last 24 hours. Hampi Durrer and Henry Carr were in the fields of gold only for their fuel pump to go, whilst poor Andrew Duerden and Michael Rodel missed a hidden control when they had been almost certain to achieve gold medal status in the big Mercedes W115 230. Swiss Christian Dillier and Tony Brooks were there covered in gold too, until the tortuous Loch Ness Monster regularity in the dead of the final night, lured them into a ditch putting the 1930 Ford Model A almost on its side. They got out and back in the rally, but their gold had evaporated with the rain.

In that same relentless and demanding Loch Ness Monster, a family team of two sisters, Texa and Danna, with their father Andy Sim perched in the dickie set in the back of their 1957 Sunbeam Rapier, became heroes as they helped seasoned crew Kevin Haselden and Ryan Pickering to go onto gold! Danna and Texa helped push the Haselden Mini up a hill as it struggled for traction, and was suffering some clutch slip.  As total newbies, this was a generous act when they were sometimes floundering themselves, but in the end, they loved the experience.

Texa said; “I’m very pleased and so glad we achieved the finish. Whilst we made it, we are exhausted at the same time, although we did really well. I think we smashed it considering we're complete novices”. Danna; “Essentially, we think we did okay, we split the loads which we managed pretty well between us all. So, yeah, it was great, actually it was amazing!

Texa; “ When we did get it right, we all felt brilliant, it was very satisfying. Also just pulling things back from tipping point, you know on a few we were like, oh, we're two minutes down. and then we got going and we made it up, or just general hairy moments! Wales was so unbelievable. I think we were all over the place because it was the first day, and we just hadn't settled into it as well, and it was fast and hard.”

Andy, was so pleased that his daughters had done so well on such a tough event; “They have done extremely well, they were fantastic, I've just sat there in the back, as I said, I'm ballast, and unfortunately, generations of undernourishment makes us small, you see, and we can fit in, but I had a ringside seat watching the drama unfold. Anyway. to the organisers who have excelled themselves and helped us out on two occasions, we say a big thank you.”

For their efforts, the Sim family were awarded the ‘Spirit of the Rally Award’ at the black tie prize giving dinner in Wick.

In the same Special Awards section, another newbie team of the tiny Fiat 500F of Tim Lawley and Nicu Mladin, was presented with the ‘Against all Odds’ Trophy by FIVA’s Kurt Staud for their persistence and doggedness – even when Tim put diesel instead of regular petrol into the fuel tank when he was ‘totally knackered and not thinking’ as he said. The crew also raised a huge amount of money for the Evie Charity.  

LeJog is very popular in Germany and one of its biggest fans and supporters is German Journalist Thomas Geiger. “ I can't wait to come back in 27 when you celebrate the 30th anniversary of LeJog! It was just great fun surviving the Monster at Loch Ness in the third time, the first year we missed it. The second time we missed it due to the snow, and now we made it in 2025, that was just an experience.

“No, we will definitely not wash our VW Golf GTi, but it will get some more dirt because we will it drive back to Germany on its own wheels, it's not going to go on a trailer. We're going to add another 3000 kilometers, 4000 kilometers of it for fun!”