Shaun Penton

Hi Mike,

You wanted stories from this year's Network Q - well, nothing remarkable happened to me, but I thought I'd send in my two-penneth anyway. If the only people who write to you are ones who had bad experiences, you won't get a balanced view.

I had a 1-day pass for Friday, which got me in to SS3 and 5 Trawscoed, and SS6 Rheola. I arrived at Trawscoed around 7am, parked fairly easily and had a 15-minute walk to the sheep pen. Got a reasonable spot near a gate looking directly onto the cars as they negotiated a reasonably tight right-hander - there was a hairpin left just before this bend that was obscured by trees, but most of the pen could see that. Marshals seemed fairly reasonable - stopping people getting onto the stage and checking where they were stood etc. One guy also had a radio, and kept us informed periodically about fastest stage times etc (and also told us about SS4 being cancelled).

The only disappointment was that between runs, a lot of speccies went onto the stage and up onto a bank opposite - the marshals rightly said that they were fine up there provided they stayed there until after the end of the stage. If I'd known this for SS3, I would have gone up for that stage and then back into the pen for SS5 so I could make an early getaway to Rheola. I left SS5 after 30 or so cars, got out of the carpark easily and set off for Rheola. Got lost slightly, but that was my fault :-). Arrived at Rheola early - 2 - 2:15 I think - and again parked easily and had a 10-minute walk to the stage. The pens here were bad - a steep climb and very slippy going.

The pen was also only about 4 people deep and had a very good view of an uphill right-hander - people found good spots and settled down, understandably, but this made it awkward for people wanting to move further round or cross the track into the other pen. I wouldn't have fancied being late, and I guess it would have been really nasty underfoot for the re-run. Stayed here until the end, so didn't have too much trouble getting out (apart from traffic, obviously, but that's to be extpected).

So, a really good day. No problems parking, tickets got me where I wanted to be (within reason - I would have liked to pick my spot on the stage, but as it was my first rally, I've never had that luxury, so I didn't have anything to miss). It certainly gave me the bug, and I'm planning to spend more than 1 day in South Wales next year ! BTW, I've put some snaps on webshots - look at http://community.webshots.com/album/56425717ByEShW.

Cheers, Shaun