The aim of the Culmhead Challenge is to introduce people to competitive events, timings and scoring systems and as such the event is run on a similar program to a normal winch challenge event. For the 08 Challenge there were 40 punches available to them over 3 different sites with access to the sites varying over the weekend. Coupled to this were two day special stages and one night special stage.

Saturdays special stage consisted of driving around a course with the aim of getting the vehicle to touch some strategically placed coloured tennis balls. The balls had to be collected in alphabetical colour order and to add constraints not only were points allocated for the correct order but also for the quickest time around the course.

Saturday night saw a 2km night navigation exercise on an unseen piece of ground using some good tracks to avoid vehicles becoming stuck. The route was given at the start point in the form of tulip diagrams where competitors had to interpret the diagrams and follow the directions with the distances given. By now the clock was already ticking! Some interesting results came back with a winning time of 7.5mins through to almost an hour taken by some! Maybe some tulip revision for next year may be in order, although I dare say that by then we will have changed the format – just to keep them on their toes!

Sunday, along with more punches, saw special stage 3. This consisted of driving a route over some logs between ‘gates’. There were 4 gates and you could choose your own route. Competitors had a 10min DNF time so the pressure was already on and that was before the blind fold for the driver was handed over! The aim of the special stage being to get the drivers and co-drivers relationship to develop through communication skills whilst obviously also having fun on a non damaging but thinking mans special stage.

Over the course of the weekend all 40 punches were achieved (eventually) with the timings and punch nos coming in suggesting that there was plenty to keep people occupied! Overall an excellent weekend – no doubt helped in no small part by the weather (it didn’t rain once) with guys and girls learning some new skills and gaining an understanding of what it’s like to compete in a challenge event.

As ever we are indebted to our marshalls for their help and support over the two days. Without them the event would just not be able to happen. Our thanks go to Tim Jones for helping setout and plan the Night Stage earlier in the week plus his support running the stage on the Saturday night as well as providing a ‘command centre’ to run the event from. Simon Parsons and Ian Hawes were an outstanding help seeing everyone through the day special stages ensuring all went well under their capable guidance. Our thanks also goes to Chris Watts for scrutineering plus keeping control of and providing guidance to those in need over the course of the weekend.

A short road trip found us in the very boggy quarry, even with the sun shinning it’s not a place you want to drive without thinking about where your wheels are going, or you’ll be stuck for hours. This section was technically more demanding, with one or two punches needing rear winch equipped vehicles, but we set about finding the punches, again all but one punch was reached. One of them gave us a headache after I got it a bit wrong and we became entangled in a fallen tree. A bow saw made short work of the log, and some lateral thinking with the winch, we made it up the steep bank to the punch and then out safely again.

After the first day of punch hunting we all gathered round for the BBQ, I was worried that Mike had done the usual and bought far too much, but everyone was starving, and it wasn’t long before it was polished off. A camp fire was lit just as it was getting dark to keep us warm. After the BBQ we were all ready for the night stage tulip challenge. What a hoot, it was held in a small forest with criss-crossing tracks it was difficult to determine who was going which way. You had to rely on your own ability to follow the way points. We did laugh when we saw Grenville coming back towards us through the field after the compass bearing. We found out later that we had the second fastest time. Can we have a stewards enquiry please, the fastest time was something like 7 minutes’s, not possible without breaking the sound barrier. The well supplied camp fire kept us going into the wee small hours keeping us warm.

After a chilly nights sleep, and the air bed going flat yet again, it was time to get up and get ready for the second day. It became apparent that the top scores were very close, you could feel the atmosphere became a little more serious, Neil and I decided to go out guns blazing and give it real go. Another fine day saw us taking on the same punches in the quarry section, this time we made a point of not missing any and picked our way through them as quickly as possible. We made our way to the woods that were used for the night time navigation, but this time we were punch hunting again. Down by the river we found Kris taking on punch no 40, he was having such a good time, we left him too it and battled long and hard to get punch 39, sometimes little streams and grassy banks can look so inviting, my poor winch had to work overtime to get us out of that one. Special stage 3 beckoned and we made our way to the start. It looked relatively easy, just a few logs to drive over, round a tree in a loop and then back again, simple. Yeah right! Just as we started I was given the blacked out goggles and told to wear them. Neil then had to guide me round the course blind folded. I think we made a mistake in trying to use waffle boards to get over the logs, it took us a bit longer than it ought to have done, especially when one of them got wedged under the Jeep, but it was still a laugh, and we’ll know better next time. We had a short time to gather the last few punches before heading back to camp and the finish. There was plenty of time to clean up and de-camp while the points were totalled up by James.

Well done to Kris Murphy for winning the overall event, I’ll be back next year, so watch out you’ll have to work even harder to keep yourself at the top. I really enjoyed myself, and chuffed to bits to get my first ever trophy for first in class, next year I’m going for the top spot. My co-driver Neil was absolutely knackered by the time he went home, and I think regretted not booking Monday off work, hopefully he’ll join me again next year, thanks for your hard work mate.

Thanks to James for setting the event up for us. I know it wasn’t as extreme as you would normally run your events, but it was exactly what was asked for. Thanks to Tim and all the other guys that helped to put on this event. My only hope is that it continues for many years. To sum it up, great event, great weather, great BBQ, great venue, laughed all the way, roll on next year.