Awoke early after a good sleep in a gorgeous landscape, sun rising, grass looking like it was mown yesterday.
Morning ablutions and then breakfast.
Time to get to work planning our attack on the days program. The 380kms didn’t look that bad for the day, but it had included 263s of gravel travel, on a public road.
There were 5 STC’s in row. That means going from one sports section right into another. Sounds ok but the condition of the roads turned out to be atrocious. Hard dirt washouts, large river rocks the size of no 12 frozen chickens, gullies that sneak up on you and dry river beds. The roads are long and rough, to the extent that the time required to travel the distance gave us the option of just booting it to make the time and wreaking the car or slowing sensibly to enjoy the ride somehow. We began with the first but settled for the second because it was just too hard.
Most all but the hardened rallyers in the right vehicles pushed the boundaries. There are a few who have the wherewithal to write their cars off and have the fearlessness to do so. Good on them.
Our navigation was much better after we had devised a system that was better than the previous day. A couple of mistakes that were not all that bad, just ensured that we could not meet our set times.
It was a very hard day. When we settled on Steve decided to replace the rubbers on the leaf spring hangers. These were buggered after the last ordeal.
Other than that, Denise just took the punishment. She’s a real Trojan.
So, then it was shower and dinner time in the tent. It’s 9.00pm.
We were given the day eight amendments. The ERA decided that the 9 STC’s in a row was a bit much so has decided to cancel four of them.
It’s a 340km day but full of action. We start at 9.35, 1 hour earlier than today. Hope the roads are somewhat better but doubt it.
Few photos due to time and business in the cabin.
gravel travel 