London to Cape Town Rally: In the Sand

Posted on January 10, 2012 by John Glynn

Day 9 of the London to Cape Town and the men are being firmly separated from the boys, using sand as a medium. The organisers expected a major shake up once the event left Europe and that is exactly what happened: the Tuthill Porsche is now up to 6th! Here’s the story:

Every dog has its day and today it would be a Dakar-style blast of grit, sand, lose stones, large stones that need dodging with care, ruts and smooth baked-hard clay, diving between gaps in the mountains, all the time heading for a long line of spiky shaped mountains in the far distance.

Crags with pyramids, it’s a row of mountains you get when you give a child of six a blue pencil, or open an original copy of Rider Hagard’s King Solomons Mines. Route note descriptions go something like this, “keep close to cliff on left… go right of Acacia tree… straight on past yellow rock… avoid gulley before string of black boulders… head for trees on far horizon… keep small volcano on right.”

Emerging from all this was the Belgian Porsche 911 of Joost Van Cauwenberge & Jacques Castelein who set fastest time, dropping just 8 seconds. Steve Blunt and Bob Duck in the non-turbo black Subaru Impreza was nearly two minutes behind on 2m05s, and third best was the BMW M535i enjoying a good run, nearly four minutes behind the time set by the 911.

Andy Actman’s Toyota Truck was fifth, just under four minutes adrift, behind the fourth-best Rene Declercq and Francis Tuthill, who stopped to pull out the Maestro girls at one point.

Crews were at a comfortable hotel for a meal and a few hours break, at midnight they left for the port and the crossing of the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Another first for this event, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has never before ever hosted an international rally crossing its territory.