Published: Saturday, 6th March, 2010 12:00pm

'Like driving through a Christmas cake'

OIJ 322 in action on stage one of the Arctic Lapland Rally.

We can choose from several figures in Gerry's story of his journey to the Arctic Circle… There's the 5,000-mile round trip in a van with a MkII Escort on a trailer behind it. There's the 30mpg the Transit achieved on that journey. There's the temperatures of 27 degrees Centigrade below zero. There's the third in class and fifth historic, against some seriously strong Finnish opposition on the Lapland Rally.

Take your pick… any of them would be worth developing, especially when Gerry is doing the telling. He's good at it and he fills a story with amusing observations and informative anecdotes.

Gerry and his Fermanagh driver Reggie Britton have been to Finland five times now with the latter's fantastic BDA engined MkII Escort, OIJ 323, the one John Lyons drove to victory on the Donegal International Rally in the early 1980s.

That means they have the schedule of the long drive to Lapland pinned down. As Gerry puts it: "With the road network on the Continent you know what time you'll make. We left Enniskillen on January 21, had quiet roads through England overnight, were at Calais at 8am the next day and then it's 10 hours' driving to Hamburg."

The idea is to arrive at major urban areas or other potential traffic bottlenecks at the times they're likely to be quiet, so they leave Hamburg early in order to make their way through Denmark and into Sweden for a five or six-hour break in Lagan.

Stockholm (arriving late at night) is next, though it's worth pointing out that Lagan is the halfway point and already the Transit has added some 1300 miles to its odometer, and the more adventurous part of the journey lies ahead - as well as the rally, in case you'd forgotten the purpose of pounding all those miles on European motorways.

Gerry says the recommended speed limit on German autobahns is 120kmh between 8pm and 6am, though the lads stick to a steady 58mph in the right-hand lane. Out in the fourth lane the Porches, BMWs and the best from Mercedes, Audi and the exotic are more concerned about getting somewhere fast than fuel consumption.

Gerry and Reggie are happy the Transit will do 600km to a tank of diesel, "and that's towing".

"The first time to Finland was in a 2006 RWD Transit and we spent €1000 on fuel. When Reggie bought the new van, it was €500 - around half the diesel bill, double the comfort."

They take four ferries - at Stranraer, Calais, between Germany and Denmark and a short hop from Denmark to Sweden. "Once you hit Sweden you're on ground ice and we change to studded tyres in Lagan. Stockholm to Rovaniemi is 12 hours in light traffic and if the weather's on your side," said Gerry. "The first year we hit a blizzard and instead of taking 12 hours it took 20. This year the roads were much better, there was a lot of snow but they hadn't had any significant snowfall for a week."

Gerry found that the big difference from last year to this was that it was snowing at home when they left and they found the compacted snow that's normally north of Stockholm much earlier, though the Danish roads were "in remarkable condition".

"Over there they're ploughing snow, loading it on the back of tipper lorries to take to quarries to dump," Gerry said. Asked to describe how cold it was he added: "Minus 28, if you go outside and sniff, it's like putting superglue in your nose. It's fine air, nothing works, everything is in slow motion, the phone, anything that's electrically operated slows down, and anything that's blood operated!"

Keeping warm

"During the recce you're inside the car all day, but nearer the rally you're outside for longer. It dropped from minus 18 to minus 27 in half an hour one day - any exposed bit of skin… it's like the sensation of sunburn, it's that cold. You hear figures, watch it on the Discovery Channel, but it's serious… you get the feeling of what frostbite might be like, but there everybody's jumping on ditches - they're mad about rallying but they're just keeping warm!

"It's a culture all of its own. One recurring thought was that it's this is like seven months of the year. We had a reasonable three or fours of daylight, it's twilight from 9am, sunrise at 10.20am and sunset at 2.20pm, plus twilight either side of that [but the lads only to endure it a week...]."

The recce, in a hired Honda CRV, went well over four days and the snow that fell before the event was "like powder dust, not big flakes, and it's low humidity. It's a bit easier to deal with but it covers everything faster."

One problem they encountered was that the wind blew the snow off the trees on the stages down to the roads, giving them a different shape, but as car number 162 they had to stay in the ruts the 4WD runners made on the competitive sections. "But the latter part of stage five was unreal, it was big, wide corners that flow from one to another and it wasn't rutted.

"The ideal conditions are pack ice, not snow, with studded tyres. You see a faded grey line coming through - that's the ice, it's more stable. The second half of that stage was near perfect both times, when we managed to get the pacenotes to hook up and flow. There were no severe corners, there were crests but you're still into your fast and medium corner, you don't have the bumps, but it's important to note the crests."

There were 32 historic cars in the rally, 20 of which were capable of section leading times, Gerry estimates, and the Irish crew were ninth fastest at worst, and second fastest at best (on one stage).

"The experience from previous years made a big difference - the trust factor in the tyres. They're 145mm tyres with blocks on the outside and three 11mm studs on each. You have as much grip as on Tarmac in Donegal in June on nine-inch tyres, and the grip level never changes - the only issue is the ruts."

The rally route goes through the Arctic Circle, near Santa's postbox ("like Disney for Santa") and Gerry was pleased they had no issues with car, the pacenotes seemed to be accurate enough, no crazy moments and the times were there or thereabouts for their level of experience.

"A Finn'll hand your arse back to you any day of the week," is how he put it. "If you can get to within 30s of a Finn in Finland it's a good day's work and there were stages when we were within 10 or 15s of them.

"They're terrific sports people, even if people don't have the language they go out of their way to communicate. The spectators light fires and drink beer, and even among the competitors, they appreciate the fact that you've managed to drag your yoke all the way to race among them. They make a big splash, the historic competitors make you welcome, they communicate and do their level best - it's not a closed shop."

Reggie and Gerry finished third in class and fifth historic, with support from Gary Fields, Enda McLoughlin and Raymond McWeeney in service.

To sum up then: "It's certainly worth it; among our initial investigations for going to the gravel rally, we contacted Gordon Cameron, who competes in a Mini Cooper and has gone every year for the last 10… he said if you go once you'll always go back.

"But the novelty of the Lapland end has well worn off now, we've had that experience… the cold this year… On the other rally [the Lahti Historic Rally in the summer] the benefit is you have road position, being 20th is totally different, it's a better surface. But overall it's something to be experienced - once you have the experience you'll always have it."

What about the cost? "Lapland is a little stronger on the money, but we could do the summer rally for less than Donegal," Gerry reckons. They haven't decided whether to enter the 2010 event, though it's "the 10th anniversary so it would be nice to go and we would get a good seeding".

Are there any downsides to rallying in Finland? "It's so far away!"