LeJog 2025 - Leg Three Telford to Gretna Green

The first regularity of Leg Three, Weston View, set the tone for the long hard day of battling the elements and the navigational tasks, as water engulfed some rally cars, or drowned their engines. Potholes underneath the surface water punctured tyres as rain flooded the tracks only for mist to cause issues on regularity five called Cobby Sky, way up high!

The medal list had already shrunk last night during the ‘Night of the Long Welsh Knives’ when many crews medal chances were cut to ribbons over the 68 miles of tricky TC Section. The medal lists are still getting shorter, by the afternoon halt the Bronze medal list had disappeared altogether!

One regularity of the eight had to be cancelled due to flooding, but otherwise the HERO-ERA team lead by Competition Director Guy Woodcock, managed some slick arrowed re-routes to minimise the problem of road closures and the three tests all went ahead.

Hero Challenge Champion Alistair Leckie who was navigating for Shaun Harborne in his 1924 Bentley, had to urgently depart the rally to attend to some family issues, but in his place, Shaun and HERO-ERA arranged to have 2025 Bob Rutherford Scholarship winner Miles Fieldhouse parachuted in to take over! Miles was thrown into the exposed hot seat in the Vintage car and instantly acclimatised.

Roger Cooke was trying to fix his Rover P6 so he and Bernard Northmore could carry on, whilst Bill Pardoe and Derek Pearce had to stop in their Mini and sadly Richard Lambley retired his 1957 MG Magnette which he had spent a long time rebuilding. 45 cars were still running after the 3^rd Time Control of the day.

Stranded on the first regularity in the deep mud and flowing water were Helen and Peter Hanimann, again with water in the engine of their Alfa Romeo, but Peter managed to get the car going again, only for the Alfa Romeo 2000 GT Veloce of  P2P podium sitter Carlos Rieder and Stefan Roth to almost sink in the flooded track water after they chose the wrong course a little further down the road. There were punctures for many, including current gold medal sitters Kevin Haselden and Ryan Pickering in their Mini Cooper S, whilst Tony and Rachel Sheach punctured two tyres on their VW Golf GTi in potholes under the surface water and so began a search for new tyres.

Some of the competitors explained how the conditions had affected them.

Kevin Haselden; “It was pretty good, but an awful lot of water. We got water swimming in the foot wells, really when we go through some puddles, because also you don't know how big the potholes are underneath the water but you can't afford to lift off because you drop too much time.

“So you just drive and hope, and also get an awful lot of water splashed over the windscreen as you go, nearly everything's been very muddy, very, very wet. Some of the A roads are a bit tricky again, of course, but by and large, there's been plenty of space, the fog been a menace today as well. We are still hanging in gold to that extent, you know, given the conditions, we've not been doing too badly!”

Shaun Harborne; “We had a tough night last night. We had some problems with the car, and we worked our way through all those problems, we got to the hotel and said, right, tomorrow, fresh day, fresh start. Unfortunately, Alistair had some family news about his father, so he had to leave, but we all hope everything is OK, he's on a flight out to Spain today. So I spoke to the guys at Hero, and they helped out with contact for a young navigator who was sat there ready to go, and yeah, we met up at lunchtime, and we spent the afternoon together, welcome to Miles Fieldhouse! And so far so good, we're having a great adventure!

Miles; “This is definitely a different kettle of fish! It's taken a little bit of time to get kind of settled into it. You know, the format of LeJog is very different as well. But the car, it’s slightly more similar to my Land-Rover my everyday car, so it’s a bit more like home. But it's very different in an open top car,there are different kind of struggles, but that's part of the fun.”

Shaun; “The weather's been pretty tricky. Today we've been in the hills, in the mist and the dark and the rain and fair play, the young man has coped very well, he just got on with his job and pushed me around the round the lanes, I do as I'm told, and we seem to work well together!”

Tony Brooks; “Today's ended up all right, okay, but there was a time when I thought it had all gone to pot. I was doing some plotting on the motorway and I said to said to Chris, right, M1 junction, whatever next he says, ‘oh, we're in Leeds!’

Christian Dillier, “Yesterday night was tough, really tough, extremely hard, not just for us. I got a very good navigator, but our 1930 Ford Model A was suffering, and I was suffering as well. Let's not forget that baby there soon gonna celebrate the 100, I mean, if we were human beings at 95 years old, trying to do what this car does, forget it. No, it was good today.”

Mark Godfrey; Currently in gold with navigator Martyn Taylor in their MGB. “I mean the rain? It’s just on the road, it is so bad, it's the surface water everywhere. It's not as bad as it was last night, but still tough.”

Mike Cochrane ,”We had wiper failure, one flew off so John had no wiper on his side. His arm was out of the window wiping his side of the screen, trying to get me to look at the maps and call the road ahead of him to give him an idea of when any kind of turn was coming up. Yes, it has been soggy and totally wet all day, every time I went to get out of the car I sank into deep mud or had water over my shoes. The car has been firing on all cylinders and looks amazing considering the crash damage last night. Since they put it back together, it's much more solid than it was last night. We had a reasonable day, and I think we are still in the Silver medals.”