[woodcote]

First up for us was 10 laps round the routed Ramsden Green stage. It proved a good shakedown, requiring a certain amount of courage with speed and precision braking on the tight corners...

   

Phil, Terry and Mike began on Nobby's Nightmare...

   

And Jeremy's gang on Wayne's World...

   

It soon became clear (the names should have given it away) that Nobby, Wayne, Colin and John were responsible for all of the stages on show. John had brought an impressive quantity of Ninco track and had built two very well thought-out stages, 'Ninco 2' being our next action after dispatching Ramsden Green...

   

8 laps on one lane - using both lanes would almost certainly have made marshalling tricky. Maybe I didn't push quite as I could, but four clean runs out of four was satisfying - and I really wasn't looking to compete with the locals on their home turf. Wayne and John were particularly rapid - and with a nice variety of cars (neither had a 914/6).

Next was Wayne's World, which was a fabulous little track - not much bigger than 6 x 2 feet (measured by my size-9s) - and leaving us all a bit dizzy after nine laps...

   

My SCX Suzuki was fun through the stage and the Ninco Porsche pretty quick. However, I had a disaster with the Subaru - a front wheel shed early and the rest of the axle following a lap or two late. Thankfully Mike had packed some superglue.

   

Our group were ripping through the stages at quite a pace and managed to squeeze in a fourth before lunch, although we did need to wait for Seb and Alan to finish...

   

This was the 'Ninco 1' stage which featured a mix of Ninco off-road (including a hill section) and ice track. These were familiar surfaces for us WHO racers, although the ramps up the hill are not something we've used yet. Six laps across both lanes (so 12 times round in total) was a challenge. Again it was the Subaru that gave be a headache here - I nailed the Suzuki, Porsche and Avant Slot Galant, but the big Ninco car needed absolute precision over the crest... and I fluffed it three times.

So that was lunch. All but one group had managed four stages. Nobby provided more bacon and sausages in the kitchen and we all compared notes from the stages. Outside, the village had stirred, but was still very quiet. Who knows what the locals made of our invasion of their rural idyll.