And When They Were Up, They Were Up

It can be difficult sometimes to remember how you arrived at a certain decision. As I stood on a windy hillside in some torrential April showers, marshalling on the Xenogamy Southern Production Car Trial (PCT), I couldn't actually remember ever having volunteered to do it. And yet, here I undoubtedly was.

I remembered the week before going down to club night to have Brian Hugh explain the theory of marshalling PCTs to me, together with a great little model hill constructed out of cardboard with matchsticks for stakes and a Dinky model car.

Now, you must remember that this was my first ever PCT - my previous marshalling experience has all been in rallies. So I was ready with my whistle, stopwatch and countdown routine. Five, four, three, two, one..... Stop right there, said Brian.

It appears that PCTs are rather different to rallies, but are very easy to understand. Let me explain what I learned. The competitors go down and line up in order to go up. They then try and get highest, and the one that is highest scores lowest. If you don't get high then your score is high and if you get all the way to the top you are clean except that your car will be dirty. The first go first first thing and the last go first afterwards. There are eight hills built on one hill and the eight hills can change while the one hill stays the same. You go up the hill even when it is going down and your score goes down as you go up, even if you are going down.

Good. Fortunately Brian also gave me a set of diagrams showing how many points people actually score for a hill. Easy bit this, you score the points for the point you never reached, except if you ran over a point you already reached at which point you get it anyway even if you have passed it. If only a bit of your car gets to a point then you score the next point unless the bit of your car isn't the right bit, remembering that the right bit can be on the right or left of the car.

So I arrived at the PCT on a rather gusty and cloudy Sunday morning. My first task (just to prepare me) was to "assemble a gazebo". On rallies of course we have quick-assembly shelters which concertina together in a natty and easy way. For the PCT we had a box of about seven thousand white sticks which have to be assembled into a frame according to instructions translated from Chinese by an Eskimo. "First prease to fit top poles to side poles with mid poles and leg poles" it said. I struggled on, tantalisingly downwind of Geoff and Rick's barbeque which was cooking my FREE marshal's breakfast (courtesy of Xenogamy, thank you very much). "No butty without a ticket!" said Rick, waving a fish slice menacingly at me. The tickets were with Brian Hugh, and Brian was setting up the hill.

Had I thought more about the word "hill", I might have had a clearer view of what to expect. Broadly speaking, you need a field of around 10 acres for a PCT, plus another field of a couple of acres or so for a paddock. The 10 acre field should be on a slope, preferably one that varies a bit. Colin Weeks had a very fine field to work with, and had constructed eight courses in various shapes. Some ran competitors straight up the side of the hill (like a game of BarFly), some were S- or W-shaped along the side of the hill and one vanished up a ravine (unlike the competitors, most of whom got stuck at the bottom). The paddock field was on the opposite slope to the hill, giving people in the paddock an excellent view of the proceedings.

Talking to one experienced competitor, I found out that there is more to a hill than meets the eye. First, you need to look at the grass. Is it dry or wet? Wet grass is much more slippery than dry. Secondly you need to know the sub-soil. Chalk, sand and clay all have different characteristics, and when the hill starts to cut up the soil comes into its own. And thirdly you need to look out for any extra vegetation. Nettles are apparently hideously slippery, and a canny clerk of the course can make a simple looking hill quite impossible by taking in a clump of low-growing nettles. Fortunately our hill had no cow-pats, just as well given how mud-spattered some people became by the end of the day.

Finally reunited with Brian Hugh, "singed on" (was it a typo on my instructions or a comment on the barbeque?) and full of bacon butties, Pat Smith and I set off to our first hill. Anyone seeing us approaching would have run off in horror, two featureless bundles of woolly clothes and waterproofs, wielding a 2lb club hammer, a professional looking stapler and a pair of viciously sharp 3B pencils.

We walked the hill (or rather waddled it, given the constraints of our clothing) to get the hang of the route and positioned ourselves strategically near the steep bits. The first competitor drove up, pottered tidly through the maze of stakes and arrows and drove off. "Nool pwoints!" I cried, memories of the Eurovision song contest surfacing. A less able competitor came along and ground to a smoky and wheel-spinning halt on one of the steep bits. I looked down at the rule "Burning is only permitted for three seconds", as the competitor attempted to use tyre power to drill through to Australia. The trick to spotting whether a car was making any progress at all was to look at the non-driven wheels, I discovered. Trying to work out whether a spinning, rocking front wheel is actually making progress forwards is nearly impossible, and some of the more determined cars could actually get through sticky patches an inch at a time. I'd like to know what they use for clutches.

Another competitor ground to a halt and slid off sideways over one of my stakes, mashing the arrow into the ground. I realised what the club hammer and staple gun were for - not to beat huge holes in the offending car but to put my hill back together again.

Looking down Brian's diagrams again, I saw the words "Bouncing is only permitted within the seating compartment". Bouncing.... hmm.... Looking more closely into the cars I saw that there were several different bouncing techniques. Rear wheel drive cars obviously need weight at the back. Passengers have their seats as far back as they can go, and more canny competitors filled the back seat with extra passengers. Front wheel drive cars require the passenger to be as far forward as possible, rather harder when you are going up a hill. The dashboard crouch and the A-pillar grip seemed popular although there was one example of the footwell prayer mat position. There also seemed to be a difference of opinion as to whether bouncing or rocking was more effective. I had a mental vision of PCT passengers buying uprated seat springs. "Try this one out sir".. boing twang bonk.... "Too much rebound".

The day was going on pleasantly until the first shower came. And the second and the third. The 3B pencils came into their own - the BTRDA had created plasticised score sheets which seemed indestructible and could be written on even in a torrential downpour. Clever stuff. And just as well, because then we got a torrential downpour.

The hill changed character entirely. Sections which previously almost guaranteed a clean run now became impassable. A tricky problem developed as gravity started to win, and some cars slid sideways off the course and all the way to the bottom of the hill. Michael Weeks steered with style and precision into a hedge. Geoff Underhill's Frontera got bogged down in a gateway. Marshals moved round to stand on the safer uphill side of bends - remembering to stand upwind as well to avoid a face full of mud.

Between cars I had a chance to observe competitors on the opposite slope returning to the paddock. It was effectively a "freestyle hill", with people able to choose their own route - the Mad Dash was often not as effective as the Canny Slalom. Geoff Underhill's Frontera got stuck halfway up the slope. A Volkswagen Golf was awarded 10 points for persistence but unfortunately none for success.

We ploughed on (literally) and by the end of the day had succeeded in running all four rounds and only had to give up on one hill (mine, need you ask). As we assembled back in the paddock to help tow people through the top gateway, an interesting situation was developing at the bottom of the slope. A red Impreza had been taken over to marshal a hill and had slid sideways into the hedge on its way back. Geoff Underhill set off to help in his Frontera, and to the horror of those observing from the paddock, got stuck on the hill and slid down faster... faster... into the ditch by the hedge, doing a certain amount of damage to the hedge and missing the Impreza by not much. Brian Hugh's Landrover went to the rescue, but couldn't budge it. As various 2WD PCT cars continued to scamper merrily around the slopes, the 4WD reputation was being shredded. The final indignity came when the ultimate 2WD vehicle had to come to the rescue - the farmer's tractor.