Jim Clark Rally 2007

It was the Jim Clark Rally over the weekend.

Paul's parents arrived on Friday afternoon, shortly followed by Colin and Maureen. We had arranged to eat out at The Wheatsheaf in Swinton in the evening, as it was the latter two's wedding anniversary.

The rally was due to go past our house twice on Saturday, in the late morning and then again in the late afternoon. I had been watching the weather forecast as it had been raining all week leading up to it, but the BBC had been forecasting sun. Come the day it had switched to showers...

Luckily it was dry albeit cold in the morning. We moved the benches to the front of the lawn to get a grandstand seat. There was a small film crew on the other side of the road from us - apparently we were exactly the midpoint of the stage.

The rally got underway on time, but there was a large gap after the first few cars had gone past. We later heard that one car had failed to take the right-hand turn at the end of the Billiemains road and ploughed straight into the ditch at the other side of the road. James, one of our neighbours, had been spectating at that location, and described it as 'awesome'...

I took the opportunity to take the dogs out and wandered around the corner to Margaret's. She had erected a small marquee and had quite a few guests there too. Paul had walked down to the end of the bridge to try to find out whether the stage had been cancelled, but could not find anyone who knew. There were a couple of young 'safety' marshals there, who were kicking stones onto the road just to make it interesting.

After about half an hour the rally got going again.

Luckily the rain was still holding off so our planned barbecue went ahead. We were just finishing when the first of the showers started so we packed up and headed back indoors. There were still a couple of hours until the second stage past us was scheduled.

The rain had stopped by then and we headed back out wrapped in jumpers and jackets. The road was now quite wet...

Surprisingly the dogs are not too concerned about the noise, and on the whole were happier to be outside with us than left on their own indoors. There was only one occasion when a particularly loud series of bangs from one of the cars misfiring sent Jen heading purposefully back towards the house. Poncho had no worries whatsoever.

We spotted Anne, Neil and Jenny on the other side of the river, and then shortly afterwards on the verge on the corner - they had waded across. I nipped down the side of our cowshed and across the road to say hello. The rain started up again, so I decided to head back home for the shelter of an umbrella.

It then started bucketing it down, and we all, except Colin and Paul, decided to go back indoors until it eased. Paul invited Anne, Neil and Jenny over to get out of the rain. However, they were happy standing in our garden under umbrellas still watching the rally.

It eased off again so we ventured back out for the last few cars and land rovers.

On Sunday we all walked the dogs to Edrom. About half-way there, just around a right-hand bend, a large section of hedge has been taken out on the left and a little further on an abandoned wheel arch and bumper are propped up against the fence on the right.

Paul has just spotted that the rally is going to be shown on Sky Sport 3 at 3 p.m. today and again later on Sky Sport extra... I will be looking out for my garden :)