Random reminder

Press, 15 October 1976, Page 18

Random reminder

THE HARD WA’i

There must be maty frustrated Heatway Rally drivers mentally turning the corners, negotiating all the hazards and arriving first tn a shower of glory, as they watch progress on television. One of them is a man who likes to go one way and come home another. The map and the signpost said "Not suitable for caravans’ but nothing about small cars, so in spite of protests from the navigator, his wife, they ar. off on the detour. The da'- started as a fine cloudless one but as ♦he road, which started out as an ordinary back country road, climbed into the hills, dnzzle descended. They drove over the first ford although the navigator did remark tt looked unused Even the road -■cemed over-

grown with grass until it deteriorated into two ruts. He drove on, convinced that if it was on his AA map it was a road and he pointed out the odd drunken marker that was designed to save them from hurtling down into space unless they kept well over towards the overhanging, by now dripping, trees. The ninth ford was a creek filled with boulders. It was too far to go back so it was everyone out but the driver. The navigator stepped into a foot of cold creek water in her new shoes but expended some of her anger by helping to remove the boulders. The twenty-second ford was their undoing. The brakes seized There they were, marooned on a small mountain-top, no-

one within miles They had seen no-one at all on their trip. The boot was unpacked, the tools found and with do-it-yourself skill the driver fixed the brakes. The children had run on ahead in hopes of finding civilisation and ran back to report a tractor working miles away on a farm. The navigator, refraining from comment, had knitted several inches of the back of a jersey. Half an hour later they reached the main road, still without meeting another car. hiker or giimpsmg a farmhouse.

They have met a man since who says he has driven over the same saddle. She is convinced he is either the A.A. man who drew up the map or another frustrated Heatway Rally driver like her husband.