Guild of Motor Endurance 2015 -- anyone going?

Guild of Motor Endurance 2015 -- anyone going?

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Steve-B

Original Poster:

710 posts

283 months

Monday 2nd February 2015
quotequote all
I see that the often Caterham won GOME 2015 has been announced and they're going from Geneva to Barcelona, September 2015. It looks like a very scenic route this time!

Anyone looked at their flyer on http://www.guildofmotorendurance.co.uk/2015/2015%2... or their regulations on http://www.guildofmotorendurance.co.uk/2015/2015%2... and decided to sign up yet?

We may well make this year's event -- the previous 2 years saw a variety of personal and family crisis' that caused us to pull out of both. Provided I've sold the SV and have a suitable replacement, we'd likely do it in the SV replacement.

Anyone else signed up / looking at going yet?

Steve-B

Original Poster:

710 posts

283 months

Monday 2nd February 2015
quotequote all
We've done it twice and won our division first time out to Corsica and came in second on the Florence one. Very interesting events to be in, made some long term friends from it we still keep up with.

We had planned to do last years event but had to pull out because my Father passed but we did make it to the start at Ace Cafe.

It should be on any Caterham owners bucket list I'd suggest ;-)

Steve-B

Original Poster:

710 posts

283 months

Tuesday 3rd February 2015
quotequote all
A typical day "per se" sees you load car around 7am, eat brekkie then be off around 8am. Typically the entire route is laid out presuming 30-50Mph speeds (a LOT harder than it appears when you count in all the obstacles in a drive), 1-2 morning controls, then a lunch control/break and several more controls in the afternoon until final control at the evening hotel. You have a Tulip book for the entire route, so worst case if you got totally lost, you can find the evening stop and go there. I've never had to do that as I'm married to a Navigatorix who talks to me through our headset intercom and we get there every time smile

You do have to pack your car with the view of total self-sufficiency which makes it all more the challenge...

You DO NOT need to be a track day hero, in fact the more consistently you can maintain speed over distance is the winning formula. The year we won, (if memory serves me) we were 2:32 off projected time after 2,600 or 3,600 km. The year we got second we were something like 5 or 6 mins off -- it is so variable.

First event we were heading up a pass in France to the morning stop, came around a turn and a Cobra replica was sliding down on ice. So we had to do a 150km detour to get to the control +1 past there.

I have to say, having done rallyes in Texas where I grew up, these are an absolute blast!