While the prospect of a rally in Kabale was widely welcomed,
there was some controversy surrounding it’s organisation. For starters it didn’t make sense that the
Jinja based Eastern Motor Club was organising a rally all the way West in
Kabale. Secondly the original date of
the rally on Easter weekend was sharing a date with another motor cross event in
Kampala - something that the sporting calendar planners had hitherto said was not allowed, however the long weekend would see the rally run on Good Friday and
Saturday and leave Sunday for traveling. At the last minute the rally was moved to a
later date which did not go down well with many competitors who had prepared
and would be unduly inconvenienced by the change. The organisers cited a health scare in the
area.
Kabale was nouveau:
The itinerary was different. In sharp contrast to normal Uganda rallies where we spend the Saturday morning and afternoon pulling grass out of the super special grounds because we only cover less than 5 kms the entire day, for kabale, Saturday was big business. By 9 am we were already in the stages proper and by 10 30 am we had completed the first service stop after the first loop of 3 stages totaling 42 kms and 25% of the rally distance . By the time we went to bed on Saturday, we would have covered a whopping 110 kms of competitive stages with more stages to come on Sunday.
The itinerary was different. In sharp contrast to normal Uganda rallies where we spend the Saturday morning and afternoon pulling grass out of the super special grounds because we only cover less than 5 kms the entire day, for kabale, Saturday was big business. By 9 am we were already in the stages proper and by 10 30 am we had completed the first service stop after the first loop of 3 stages totaling 42 kms and 25% of the rally distance . By the time we went to bed on Saturday, we would have covered a whopping 110 kms of competitive stages with more stages to come on Sunday.
Other than the Lubiri palace super special, we had never had
a super special bang in the middle of and along the high street of a major
town. The super special was super accessible
not just because it was free entry but also because of the elevated landscapes
surrounding it, you could catch the action without entering the stadium.
The stages were very different from anything we were used
to. We had expected winding roads and
power sapping altitude but nothing like what we actually encountered. We had narrow, rough and unimaginably tucked
into the terrain, extremely tight and therefore slow sections. I don’t remember
anyone complaining after the power sapped out by the altitude as the last thing you needed was a
barking bronco on those unbridled cliff hangers. We also had stages running along the highest and deepest
lake in the world – scenic views if you forget the insanity that it required to
drive it.
Continues in Part 2: The Stages
Kabale that was...Mehn☺
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