The meeting for this ill-fated rally was at Gipsy Lane for 6:30pm, with myself, Ben Harvey, and Ding in the TOYO Golf and James Martin, Andy Doyle, Yadash Suresh, and Joe Pearce in the Clio Cup. Our convoy swiftly took the A34 to Newbury, then onto the starting point for the rally: The Craven Arms in Enborne.

On arrival we attended the drivers briefing and were warned about the tricky road conditions caused by the near torrential downpour that had recently fallen. After a few preparatory Jaffa Cakes, we lined up in the car park, with the Clio as Car 10 in the novice class, and the Golf - as one of two beginners - lining up as Car 12. The rally started poorly with Ben and I directing Ding the wrong way almost immediately, but after a few more wrong turns we arrived at Time Control 1 (TC1). However, we were so late that the control had already decamped and left. Another competitor told us that the control had closed just before we got to it, so we pressed on to TC2 in an attempt to regain some ground. Luckily this was successful and we made the checkpoint whilst it was still manned. By this point, we were starting to get into the swing of things, and excluding the occasional wrong turning we were slowly but surely making up time on the subsequent stages.