Pentillie Festival of Speed 2012

Pemtillie Castle makes a great venue for a speed hillclimb. It was wet, though. This Alfa Dana 500 was using Castrol R so smelt divine.

This is a new event based at Pentillie Castle on the western bank of the River Tamar and centres on a speed hillclimb up to the house from the river and into the estate beyond. Pentillie Castle featured on the telly a few years as a country house in need of rescue and has become a prestigious wedding venue. Unfortunately, the tarmac drive to the house showed signs of wear sufficient to make the blushing bride bounce out of her bodice in the backseat of the nuptial Bentley limo.

Actually, I just made that up but the potholes were so bad that the Coryton family had the whole drive re-surfaced. Then, local enthusiasts said lets have a speed hillclimb on your lovely new road and after a lot of preparatory work the first event was held today.

Another fragrant competitor using Castrol R was Stuart Evans in his MG J Special

Unfortunately, it hammered it down and the parking areas beacme muddy very quickly. This is nothing unusual for the hillclimbing fraternity. I remember Tregrehan in 1985 and Castle in 2007 when trials driving expertise came in very handy to get to the start line and on the way out.

It was a smart move to not just concentrate on the hillclimb, although this was the principle draw. There was off-road racing, a Land Rover experience, trade stands and demonstrations of sporting car trials.

Forster Racing School demonstrated their Rage buggy

The first and last of these additional attractions made the most of the atrocious weather conditions and mud was happily flung.

Not a brilliant photo but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, in the sky we had the Abarth stunt plane, which tumbled out of the clouds tail first, then left wing first, then right wing first as it demonstrated stall climbs and turns.

I thought this event would see me competing in a speed event for the first time. I had the car in the shape and form of Le Monster Mazda, I was a member of an invited club (the Imp Club) and getting an MSA competition was easy and not expensive. The only fly in the ointment up one's nasal passage was that the Mazda is so highly modified it would run in Class C2, Modified Series Production Cars over 1800cc. And for that it needs to have a rollcage fitted. Getting a rollcage would be awkward as 1996 Mazda 323Cs are rare in the UK and I already know that my insurer would increase my insurance, despite a cage being a safety device. They view such things as a statement of intent and I can only assume that cars with cages are statistically more likely to have a claim.

If I kitted Le Monster Mazda out with a cage this the kind of car I'd be up against, the Astra GTE of Stewart Lillington. It's stripped out, has polycarb windows and no lights. Stewart posted a run in the low 47s when it briefly wasn't raining

I saw a few guys from the Launceston & North Cornwall Motor Club. I know them from my trailling exploits and it was a good opportunity to see their machinery without it being covered in mud.

Dick Bolt's Escort doesn't let on how special it is. The dude knows how to drive it, too. Watch this!

Dick Bolt's Mk1 Escort is a highly developed bit of kit with a four pin diff and a Duratec engine putting out about 190bhp on throttle bodies. Who needs Cossy power? He's putting a very special Ford Pop together with a 2.3 litre Duratec engine and wishbones suspension. I'd love to see that car on a classic trial but Dick's doing well with the Escort and is hoping to get three Triples in a row with a Gold in the Edinburgh in October. I hope I haven't jinxed him by writing this but I reckon he'll have a blast anyway.

There was a good display of classic cars just down from the paddock, ranging from an unclothed F1 racing sidecar outfit to a special bodied Model T Ford.

Whenever the cars lined up for a run the rain fell in earnest. Footpaths around the house became very muddy and unless you had good quality walking boots, which I had, it was easy to slip over.

Fabio at speed in his rear-engined Mini - not a great smudge of it but the light was going

I saw someone from one of our car club meetings, Fabio Luffarelli, with his spaceframe, bike engined Mini. He's more used to circuit racing and said that he found the discipline of waiting around and then being entirely focused on nailing the perfect run up a narrow hill completely different to that of racing at - say - Pembrey. There seems to be traffic in competitors between hill-climbing and circuit racing but in Cornwall we don't have a circuit, just a profusion of hills. There's lost of good hills but sometime what we really need is a circuit. Surely there must be somewhere in the clay country that we can use?

Until then Pentillie helps sate the hillclimber's passion for speed.

To really raise a smile in these conditions, what you need is a Crossle sporting trials car

Most people faced the poor weather conditions with good cheer. It was a severe test for the organisers but they'd obviously prepared the paths with tippings of shale and laid in an awful lot of straw bales to spread on the boggy bits around the exit and entry points in the paddock and display areas.

So a few cars got stuck in the mud - they were soon on their way again.

One or two people though getting a bit shoutie would help matters but of course it didn't. Generally it was the right crowd with no crowding. The event was well supported despite or maybe because of the weather. Everyone that I spoke to (I ignored the shoutie ones) sincerely wanted this event to succeed, from my MCC muckers in the display area, via the drivers shaking their heads in disbelief at the heavens to the bedraggled photographer at Repton who had two coats, one for him and another for his massive camera.

My mum and sister saw Pentillie on the telly a few years ago and we went up there when the gardens were open. It rained hard then, too, although nothing like as bad as today. Anyway, we got chatting to some of the volunteers and they said they were more than willing to help because the Corytons were "such a nice family". I think there was that sort of goodwill for this event as well. 

The weather was exceptionally bad and if the Pentillie Festival of Speed works this well first time out in monsoon conditions then just think how nice it'll be next year when the sun shines.