Sunday 11 November 2012

Sunday - Cyprus Rally comes to Droushia...

One stage of the Cyprus Rally was taking place on the edge of Droushia today - near Pittokopos - Simon had text to let us know and to see if we wanted to go and watch it.  If you want to know more about the rally then you can read all about it here Cyprus Rally 2012


Strangely John had been talking about it to Running John when they had been at footie yesterday, not realising that it would be passing through today, so we rang Running John to see if he wanted to come too and so he came up to us on his Vespa (lovely new shiny Vespa) and we set off on our rather battered Zhongneng and one of the footrests that I use fell off!


We managed to make our way through the assembling crowds and went to find a vantage point.  It was such a stunning day and we were in such beautiful countryside - I felt overdressed!!  We were uncertain as to which way the cars would be coming and there were next to no stewards around and very little in the way of health and safety so we chose to be a reasonable distance from the road so that if a car lost it we wouldn't be caught up in the carnage.

It was only a matter of time before the cars started to whizz round the track and fortunately the obligatory policeman blew a referee's whistle to let the crowd know when there was a car coming - although this was given a stiff ignoring by people hoping to get a better view with no thought as to their own safety.  In fact at one point a farmer was stoically driving along the road with a rally car approaching from behind at about MAC 4 - it was until he was almost rear ended that he moved out of the way and that was in spite of all the shouting and screaming by people trying to warn him.
 
There was a helicopter in action too - we think it was from Eurosport or something similar filming the action from above.  The pilot was pretty damn good at slinging it around and keeping close to the action (and electricity cables) getting low to the ground and having to drive through the dust clouds created by the cars.

The best place to stand, and take pictures, was at the hairpin bend by the lookout point because that was where the handbrake turns took place and where one or two of the cars just managed to hang onto the road.  I did manage to work out how to take video on my camera and after one or two abortive attempts where there was some interesting footage of sky, tarmac and backs of heads, I got a car coming round the bend.


It made for an interesting afternoon and meant that we escaped the sound of gunshots which seemed very close to the house - hunting season has started unfortunately.

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