Badawi Trail to the Last Oasis 2026, Syd Stelvio Day 7 – Al Ula to Duba – 360km
The weather changed on Day 7 of the Badawi Trail, with grey skies overhead and even some localised rain. The most dramatic shift though was the increase in wind, that tore through the canyons in the Al Ula area, whipping up vast sandstorms that consumed the horizon. The storms were devouring the cars as well, with grains of sand boring into windscreens and paint work, flying through the atmosphere at random but striking with keen intent as the wind buffeted the vehicles around like sails.
For the open top crews, the mauling was worse, as they experienced a physical demonstration of how the great sandstone monoliths of this monument valley were born. There was an agony of numbness as the torment of particles burnished cheeks and peeled back eyes, and all on a road that had ruptured along most of its length. It was great fun!
The day before had been a non-driving day, but any rest was long forgotten now, and the drive away from the sumptuous cocoon of the Habitas Wellness Retreat must have felt like a baptism of fire for our newest recruit, young Harry Medcalf, competing with his father William, in William’s Bentley SuperSport. No doubt both will be up to speed quickly and it’s fantastic to have another crew with us for the second half of the rally.
For anyone who could peer into the horizon for long enough, the conical rock formations were incredibly impressive, and from the great heights of some of the climbs the far-reaching landscape was like something from an alien planet. The crew of the Artemis Rocket could have saved themselves a lot of fuss and come along with us instead.
A route control at the Mushroom Rock marked the beginning of the end of this part of the mornings geological tour, with a small detour from the road to see the famous sandstone pedestal. As with all our days in Saudi Arabia, this would be another leg that showed the variety of geology in the Kingdom, even if there was a distinct lack of vegetation in the vistas. This reached its peak, quite literally, on the approach to the midday time control, with a steep and rapid descent into the valley floor of the Prince Mohammed bin Salmen Royal Reserve, with the impressive cliffs, crags and peaks of the Tabuk Mountains.
182 km of the 360km had now passed, with no competitive action as of yet, though that was about to change with a regularity and a brace of time control sections spread across the remaining half of the day. All would take place off road, with the reg coming complete with a Garmin track to follow, just to ensure nobody ended up taking a wrong turn and surprising a local farmer in his homestead. Despite this, a third of the field still managed to record an incorrect approach into the singular timing point, and there were also plenty of maximum time penalties issued to boot, though not for best on reg Richard Clark and Jonathan Round, who finished the section 5 seconds in debt to the timekeeper.
Sadly, before they could get anywhere near the reg, there was a retirement for car number 30, the Volvo 242 of Bo Stærmose and Jens Odgaard Olsson, after their camshaft failed. A bitter blow after spending yesterday morning replacing the head gasket on the Swedish motor, though they will rejoin with a hire car in the morning.
For everyone else, post reg it was time to head to the Clock around the Rock STC section, a fast blast across the sand, that had a confusing array of tracks to choose in places. Too confusing for many, with a wadi crossing early on in the section causing consternation for more than a couple of cars, as instead of crossing the wadi they turned sharp right and disappeared well off the track. Somewhere in amongst those that went wrong in the section were second placed Mercedes crew Kurt Deklerck and Patrick Debusseré, who missed the first control completely and incurred a ten-minute penalty for the privilege, dropping them down the leaderboard.
The final STC section of the day took place in another alien landscape, under a diffuse sky filled with particles of sand. The scene was framed by a corridor of mountains, that were barely visible in the haze, as a flimsy, post-apocalyptic sun reflected off the powdery surface of the ‘planet’. It was a long, fairly direct blast between controls, but with the ever-present threat of both deep drifts of sand and omnipotent wadis. The latter would make prey out of the number five Bentley of Harry Tayler and Andrew Thompson, springing its sandy ambush on the hard charging Le Mans, that went airborne over the Gulley. At some point during the landing sequence the brake linkage disengaged and left the front wheels locked up, leaving the stricken Bentley requiring sweep assistance to regain forward motion. I’m told the sweeps needed to unleash their two biggest weapons from the toolbox to achieve a fix: a sledgehammer and a torrent of swearing!
Once this final competition section was over there were just a handful of kilometres to go to the end of the day, but the challenge wasn’t finished, as the cars were back amongst the rocks on a track that seemingly hadn’t been used regularly since the last ice age. Careful driving was needed to avoid punctures, or worse, as the crews carefully hunted the safest line through the boulders, that in many places had begun to be reclaimed by thin tresses of vegetation.
When the days numbers had been crunched and the results released by the timekeepers, it was clear it had been a tricky day. Only three cars had kept the penalties to under a minute, the best of whom had been the Ford Coupe of Richard Clark and Jonathan Round, bolstering their first position overall. The other two crews to stay under a minute were the de Sarrau’s in the leading Mustang and Peter and Deborah Fitzcharles, campaigning the bright orange Fangio, further consolidating their second place overall.
Tomorrow, we head north, close to the Jordanian border, before traversing inland to Tabuk, as the rally passes the halfway mark, on a day 450km in length.
Syd.