LeJog 2025 - Leg Two Penhow To Telford

LeJog bared its teeth at the end of Leg Two as those crews still running took on 68 miles of a daunting Time Control Section in the early hours of Sunday morning. Dubbed the ‘Night of the Long Welsh Knives,’ a TC is both adored and feared in equal measure for its intense driving and navigational challenges, with medal places at stake, one error can cause pain as a team can be cut from a hard earned medal position.

Before teams could even attempt the TC section, they had three very hard regularities to cope with, which Lotus Elan Plus Two navigator Mike Cochrane described as ‘full on, as hard as any TC section!’ The regularities proved very, very difficult with cars off in ditches, including an incident for John King with Mike in the Plus 2 as he crunched the right front after some downhill 90s got a bit too much for the Lotus. Another front running crew, Belgians Kurt Vanderspinnen and Guy Desmet had suspected water pump trouble at Crosskeys which the Sweeps were helping them with, before they went into the long night ahead. Fortunately, it was a belt issue which was fixed. Meanwhile John King was using yet another roll of tank tape to try and patch up his Lotus.

The TC Section had everything in it, slippery hills, water splashes, fords, fast sections, and even a double ford. A Fiat 124, had drowned out, some crews had to get out and push cars out of water when they drowned out, and the hairpins were super tight. The fast sections across the moor were absolutely exhilarating, and this was going to be a big night in terms of medals and who could make it through, or even get it right!

The 1939 Ford Model A of Christian Dillier and Tony Brooks went past with its old headlights barely illuminating the black night, and then crashed its underbelly over a hump, but the Swiss never lifted the throttle! When the medal positions were calculated at the end of the leg in Telford, Dillier and Brooks had risen from silver to gold – some effort in such an old car in difficult conditions. 

Even some top runners doubted their navigational judgement and had to turn around in the TC section. And then the Golf GTI of Thomas Geiger and Andrea Ignaz had been all over the place. Three quarters of the way through the TC section, they missed a severe left turn three times, turning round each time, once in a muddy farmyard, and then appeared ten minutes later. It was a true ‘Night of the Long Welsh Knives.’

Iain Tullie is a seven time gold medal winning navigator on LeJog, he and his Mazda MX5 driver Andy Lane have won seven golds each, but even they had some obstacles to overcome in the two hours it took to drive the complete TC Section at a 30 mph average.

Iain takes up the story: “We worked our way through the field. We had a couple of people broken down in front of us, because there was so much water around. People were getting stuck in the huge puddles, we had to push two cars physically out of the way! So, in total, it probably cost us about six minutes. But then it was a good, clean run. Andy drove it really well. The little Mazda just seemed stand up to all the things that were thrown at it!”

Stewart Christie and Andy Ballantyne have also been hanging in there in the Silver Medal position in their MGB GT. Stewart said; “It was OK, but I think we went around all the route and got to the controls. Andy did an amazing job, a fantastic job reading the maps, I couldn't do anything within the first five miles, but it was OK later and I got better, we're still in the hunt, so that’s the main thing, we're silver just now.

“We're quite a bit behind Mark Godfrey and Martyn Taylor, they've been really good. So we just hope they may slip up somewhere, we’ll see what happens later on, you never know.”

Mark Godfrey; Is in the gold medal position with Martyn Taylor in their MGB, Mark commented on the TC section. “ It was an interesting night, shall we say. It was very, very, tough, to be honest. The roads were quite rough, but it was tough. It was tough on the navigator and the driver as well, it's just relentless, but sitting here afterwards in the cold light of day - I loved it!”

The conditions were so bad for Simon Arscott and Emily Anderson in their totally open 1937 Aston Martin, that they have pulled out of LeJog.

Simon: “We pulled out last night. It wasn't the fact that it was cold or rainy or anything, the standing water is not good, if we hit standing water it is so dangerous, the Aston Martin is so low, we would get a wave of water all over us but then also we have no brakes. We were just driving up hedges and banks to try slow us down because we just couldn't stop, and with the average speed we're taking, it's really hard, just too dangerous. We think Leg Three will probably be fine at first, but going through Scotland, it's going to be pretty much the same.”

Another crew who survived the conditions and remained in the gold medal position were Andrew Boland and Andrew Bramall in their Ford Escort RS200. So how did they get on last night?

Andrew:” We almost did very well. We were really doing very well up to about the fourth last TC, then we lost two minutes where we should have turned down to the time control, we were after making the right decision, but second-guessed ourselves! We are in a good medal position, but it's very early days.”

Some crews didn’t even make it as far as the TC Section after issues in the tough regularities beforehand. Helen and Peter Hanimann from Switzerland stopped in a little lake with the engine on their Alfa Romeo Giulia Super having drowned out; Helen said; “We were in a huge puddle in the dark, stuck for quite a while, then eventually we got towed out! Helen and Peter probably asked for divine intervention and their call was answered, as the very first owner of the car in 1972 was actually a Nun!

After all mayhem, the results team at Telford also calculated that Kevin Haselden and Ryan Pickering were in the gold position in their Mini Cooper S along with Swiss Hempi Durer navigated by Henry Carr in the Volvo. Eric Michiels and Aswin Pyck delivered another fine LeJog performance, also in gold so far in their Porsche 924 S.