Saturday 8^th November was a night of many firsts. For four new members of the club, Dan Mandrut, Bhavesh Ramdoyal, Calum Hughes and Andrew Clarkson it was their first ever rally, having only learned about a navigational rally two evenings beforehand. For me, it was my first time competing as a member of EUMSC (apologies to my homeclub VBMC!!), my first Scottish Navigational Rally, my first Plot & Bash and my first night rally (having only previously done 12-cars back home). Another EUMSC member was also competing - Ewan Leeming had led the much appreciated Rally School (with extra guidance from Herve Venries), on the Thursday evening.

  The Forth Bridges Rally was an Inter-Association event so there were crews coming from all over Britain to compete for their associations so there were top crews competing. All of us except Ewan were entered into the Novice (C) class – this meant we got the easiest form of clues. Ewan was in the Expert (A) class so he got the hardest form of clues.  The rally was split into two halves, the first half had 18 time controls (including an off-road section – tarmacked luckily!), and the second had 16. Our own total mileage was about 200 miles.The first half was south of the Firth of Forth, starting from South Queensferry and finishing not far from the start. We went as far south as J5 of the M8 and as far west as Cumbernauld.