Dazecoop – Blog of David Cooper – Photography, Videography, Drifting & modifying cars

Waking up at 4.00am, driving 200+ miles, going for a huge walk in the freezing cold with a high chance of rain in a forest in Wales, and then driving back again doesn’t sound like too much fun, does it? Combine this with a mix of some 150 rally cars, including the top world class rally drivers for the 2007 Wales World Rally Championship – now we’re talking!

So me and three of my good buddies decided we were up for the mammoth challenge, myself, Sam, Ben and Adam. We awoke at the stupid o’clock of 4.00am and headed off to Tesco for the days supplies. After some amusing early morning arguments over what drink to take and what flavour noodles to cook we were off to Wales properly by about quater-past five.

Some tiring four hours later we’d arrived just on-time for the first stage of the day at Crychan for 9:38am sharp. We had a long walk to find the stage, but eventually we found a spot to see the first couple of cars come through, although it wasn’t the best place for camera or video opportunities as both myself and Sam found out (with his tiny video-capable camera)

After another half-hour or so of trekking through the dense forest, we found ourselves a decent, relatively high speed corner for some serious mud slides. Here’s some of my favourite shots from this corner.

All the cars eventually made it through the first stage and the forest went somewhat quiet – lacking the sounds of the pop-bang ALS turbo systems echoing through the trees and valleys. We decided to take a walk down the stage itself to try and find a really decent corner to grab some photos of the cars, and eventually we found ourselves the perfect point.

However, since we were all really hoping to do the Cardiff Millenium Stadium stage later in the day (at about 5pm) we were getting pushed for time to make it back to the car, and then drive the one-and-a-half hours to Cardiff in time to see it. We decided to get back to the car and make a move now, but there was one problem – how? To get to where we were, we had to walk the stage itself, but we couldn’t do that anymore since the cars would be coming through at any moment. Instead, we decided to "walk" directly in the direction of the car, right over a hill behind us.

No problem, right? It’s just a hill. No, this was a mountain in the famous Wales Brecon Beacons National Park! Ok, so maybe not quite a mountain, but it was bloody steep! It took us over half an hour to climb this beast, I was out of breath, having difficultly breathing and at several points on the way up I thought I wasn’t going to make this!

Anyway, so we’re almost at the top now. "Thank God. We’re almost there. Come on, I can do this", I was muttering to myself, then I see the TV helicopter following the rally cars through the stage. It was an awesome sight of being almost level with a helicopter, but then what does Ben do? He only goes and waves at it, the stupid fool! I tried shouting at him, trying to tell him to stop waving, but I couldn’t even talk since I was so out of breath!

Next up, a red helicopter comes along a few minutes later, right next to us, then lads on the top of the hill! "Oh crap, its mountain rescue, its the bloody mountain rescue!!" I was thinking. Not good – really not good! (although I wouldn’t mind a lift right now!). I finally got myself to the top of this damn hill to find the helicopter was just a nice red one owned by some rich so-n-so’s.

I began to get my breath back and I turned around to see the view. Words cannot describe it, so I took these to show you

(Yep – thats me!)

What an incredible sight! Right there, at this moment, I was so proud. Just sat, enjoying the scenery with my friends, watching the famous Wales WRC take place below us with the constant echo of man and machine battling it out on the rough terrain that mother nature has created for us. An incredible, unforgettable moment for me.

With little time left, we continued on our mission back to the car and on to Cardiff. Through yet more forest we trekked on, following a narrow path which looks like was created by motorbikes, and eventually we ended up back at my car.

We got changed out of the smelly, soaking clothes we’d been in all day into fresh ones and headed off to Cardiff. We ended up following a black VW Jetta for the entire route which was amusing since we didn’t know for sure that this guy would be going to Cardiff anyway, but it looked as if he was heading that way.

Listing to the official "Rally FM" on the radio for most of the way up sounded like we were going to have problems parking when we did eventually arrive at Cardiff. They kept on saying that all the car parks were full and that most of the city centre main roads would be closed very shorty, but regardless of that we continued following this Jetta.

It looked like he knew where he was going which was certainly more than what I knew and low-and-behold, he headed into a car park where we sat behind him while he was spoken to by a marshal. He was let through and went off to park, and when I spoke to the marshal he told me the car park was full. "What about that guy?" I asked, pointing to the Jetta driving away, "He’s part of the rally team"! That’s great, now we have no idea where we are or where we can park! Luckily, however, we did find somewhere to park, although the only spot we could find meant my car was sticking out a fair bit on the road.

We raced to the Cardiff Millenium Stadium to try and grab ourselves some tickets for the remainders of the show. After some queueing in the torrential rain we managed to get our tickets which was actually a family ticket (thanks to the young dude serving!!). Finally we made it, sat down in the Cardiff Millenium Stadium just in time for the first of the WRC cars to make their appearance for the special stage.

I didn’t take any more photos than that one above, but it was simply awesome to watch the cars slide effortlessly through each corner with incredible accuracy. All in all, a really brilliant day!