Syd Stelvio Peking to Paris 25 - Day 4 – Ordos to Olon Bulag – 500km
The first 500km day today, and also the first with some desert driving, both elements that will become the norm over the next few weeks. It is also the first day with a campsite at the end of it, which is either something you really look forward to, or loath with every inch of your being.
The day’s action would begin not far from Ordos, which is a small city at a mere 10 million inhabitants. Almost immediately at its limits though, the wilderness begins, as the road heads into plains, scarred with canyons, a strange topography and one followed by the first regularity of the day. The early morning light gave it all a slightly eerie feeling, and the presence of a lone pink house at the top of a hill did nothing to lessen the horror film aesthetic. Just don’t knock on the door.
Halfway through the regularity, the tarmac road gave way to gravel and dirt track, and this change of surface perhaps contributed to most time penalties being accrued at the second timing point of the reg. At the end of the reg the scenery switched from horror film to a distinctly dystopian feel, as sandy tracks passed through industrial outposts and underneath towering overhead railways.
Not long after this there was the opportunity for competitors to get stuck into the first STC of the event, or Sporting Time Control. These sections are a bit more intense than the regularities, allowing the drivers to put cars through their paces on the desert tracks. The navigation on this section wasn’t too tricky, so it was over to the pilots to complete each section within the allotted time. There were deep gulley’s, tricky climbs and rough sections. The first real challenge was a sandy section through trees that looked something akin to the Safari Rally, with deep grooves worn into the track, certainly deep enough to swallow a Fiat 500, like the one entered by the crew of Fabio Longo and the Minister of Tourism of San Marino, Federico Pedini Amati. They had unfurled the San Marino flag in front of the car the previous evening, an item which dwarfed the diminutive machine, still, at least they could use it to signal for help should they be swallowed by the sand! Later in the day conjecture would become fact, as the Sweeps were despatched to rescue the Fiat from the sand.
Some cars were hitting the section with great enthusiasm, such as car number 58, the AMC AMX crewed by Jim Valentine and Jonathan Lodge. You don’t get points for overtaking, but if you did, they might be top of the leaderboard, flying past cars like it was a computer game, though they did incur 30 seconds of penalty on the first half of the section. Blood pumping and STC dispatched it may have been a bit of a disappointment to realise that we were only 60 or so km into the 500km day. Plenty of time to regain composure then or contemplate misdemeanours on the long drive ahead.
The scenery was beginning to change now, as we encroached upon the Gobi Desert for the first time and as sand dunes billowed up in the distance, the route picked a course past the great salt lakes of the Ordos Plateau, near Bayinwusu Town. Some of the dunes ran close to the road, with great plastic grids placed upon them in an effort to pacify their constant migration. Later, as we descended closer to sea level, there were vast swathes of Paddy Fields, adjacent to the substantial waters of the Yellow River, whose water is vital to the submergence of the fields and then, desert again as the evening’s destination closed in.
There had been quite a bit of mechanical mayhem during the day, just what you need when you know you’re camping in the desert. Car 8, Steve Kiss and Richard Jeffcoat’s Rolls Royce was suffering major fuelling issues and so were forced to return to Ordos to attempt to locate parts to fix the big Roller. Ordos is of course well known for its extensive network of vintage Rolls Royce enthusiasts. At the other end of the spectrum, car 76, the Datsun Zebra, dropped a diff seal, and with no spare needed a flatbed to finish their days journey. Christos Livades and Chris Papaioannou, who had been flying the previous day suffered a broken fuel regulator, but luckily for them chief mechanic Squeak rebuilt the unit on the side of the road, all under the gaze of the local constabulary. There was also a puncture for Daniel Spadini and Franck Neveu in the 1973 Citroen DS, which with Daniel decked out in an immaculate ivory shirt, as he always is, it needed the assistance of HERO-ERA’s Patrick Burke, competing in Mercedes Fintail, to perform the filthy job of changing wheels on the Citroen. A task he completed with speed of a Formula One pit crew, have you thought about a job with the Sweeps, Patrick?
It had been quite the day, and the results reflected this, with some wild swings in the time penalties accrued. But, in a tremendous performance Brian Palmer and David Bell, in the number 61 Peugeot 504, had managed to get to the end of the day with only 1 second of penalty, closing on Harold Goddijn and Corinne Vigreux who were now head of the Classics and top of the leaderboard in their Porsche 911. The top vintage machine was still the Chevy of Father and Son Jorge and Cristobel Perez Companc, who managed to clean the STC section and pick up only 9 seconds of penalty on the reg. Until tomorrow, then.
Syd
