This year's Guild of Motor Endurance Rally took place in Sardinia on the 25th Sept 06 for 5 days. We entered our BMW powered Marlin Sportster for this event and on Wed 20th crossed the Channel from Poole to Cherbourg on the over night ferry. After a leisurely drive through France to Grenoble, via the Alps via Alpe d'Huez, Col du Lautaret, Briancon, Col di Sestriere and into Italy to Geneva, we arrived early afternoon Sat 23rd rendezvousing with the other competitors to board the overnight ferry to Olbia Sardinia.

On Sunday we set up camp in a small holiday resort at Vaccileddi a few kms down the coast and the rest of the day could be used to prepare and fine tune your car in readiness for next five days racing (not applicable to marlin owners who enjoyed the sun and a swim.) P.m scrutinering, signing on and briefing for the next morning start with the first car away hopefully at 8.00a.m the following morning. However over night we had the most horrendous thunder storm imaginable lasting 4/5 hours putting the electric and water off and flooding everything including the car park: first rain for 12mths we were told. One or two drivers thought not to have the hood up overnight and it’s amazing how much water a cockpit collects during a good storm!

Monday am first car away with the rest at 1 minute intervals; we were car no 25 and soon we are off. It is wet and foggy with washed out sand, gravel and rubbish all over the roads. We covered 500kms in 15 sections although through out the day we experienced some very twisty mountain roads, climbing to 1000mts in places, with shear drops on all sides. Back to base in time for a shower, beer, dinner with good company and pleased with the result for the day; up to 14th place we relaxed for the evening. Tues 26th 14mins after 8am we are off again, top is down and looks like a good day ahead!  Mid morning in the mountains and the fog  had closed in, we can hardly see the end of the bonnet and now it's raining hard and we are very late for mid day main control and soaked through, just time to put the top up and go on again.

Some thing is seriously wrong the directions and distance do not appear be matching, bloody long kms, what the hell's wrong!!!!  Ahh I have accidentally tripped the setting on the meter when putting up the top and we are [miles] kms out. Reset meter, consult map and road book take stock and work out that the next three controls are totally out of the question in the time left, so  quickly decide to jump forward to 4th control if we can locate it!  We find this control and a bit of time for a fuel top up, the remainder of day goes ok. The day was a disaster mainly of are own making (420kms today), we drown our sorrows with a couple of beers and recount the day's events with the rest of the competitors waiting for the days results. Surprise, surprise we've moved up to 9th place.  Wednesday morning top off and we are really going for it. Great day, all goes well, brilliant roads, mountains and views.

On the last leg of the day, heading home, an unscheduled diversion, including two controls, was completed in time, we hope but as the results are posted up we can see no points lost today and that we remain in 9th place after another 500kms. Thursday 500kms of great roads and weather, an abundance of animals all over the roads Ferrell dogs, cattle, and flocks of sheep so we just keep our foot to the floor and head for the middle of the pack!!! We only lost 5 points today. The lesson learnt however was ‘Do not get carried away chasing another competitor down the mountain and miss the hotel/control’. By the end of the day we have gained another two places and crept up to 7th place. Friday another brilliant day, a long run down the coast to get into the main stages. What’s this? The tulips (directions) lead us onto a go-kart track. It appears that the objective here is to complete the circuit in 1min 20 seconds, straddling the finish line or start losing point’s big time. 1.20 was achieved and on the line -  just!. Best result was 1.19 so we were well pleased.

Further on we past through a ghost village completely uninhabited and another called 'the village of the damned' with extremely macabre wall paintings on all the houses and buildings. Then with only 10kms to go I completely misread the road book and we retrace our route to a known point only to realise we were right anyway. Now we do have to fly, good job it's a Sportster and we are into the last control on time giving us 2nd in our class and 7th overall.

Unfortunately the last ferry is leaving at 9pm and we've all got to be on it; a mad scramble to pack bags and strap them on and race to the ferry for an over night crossing back to Genova. Early Saturday morning and everyone is bidding farewells in the car deck as the ramps go down and we are off the ship out of the port. Heading up through Italy towards the Alps, this time we go through the tunnels into France and make good time reaching Bloix by 6pm. We then decide to reorganise our ferry back to England for Sunday p.m leaving us with a leisurely drive up to Bayeaux with enough time for a quick look at the tapestry etc., Utal beach and the Mulberry Harbours before catching the Cherbourg/Poole ferry  and home by mid night. The round trip was about 3500 miles Janette did all the driving apart from to and from the ferry in the U.K and the kart track. This could become serious next year!

Sent in by Andrew & Janette Curtis