Newton Abbot Stages?

[Allyc85]

A few years ago there was the Newton Abbot stages held in devon. Unfortuantly it hasnt been run for the last couple years, but has anyone heard of any plans to get it going again?

[MrJan]

I think last year it was run at Portreath in Cornwall. Apparently Haldon forest can no longer be used so there is very little rallying left in Devon, only single venue stuff at Smeatharpe, otherwise it's pretty much trips over 90 minutes from Exeter to get to a rally.

[Allyc85]

whats the reason for not using Holdon hill, too higher fees from the forestry commision?

Rallying in this area is a joke at the moment, the only decent rally we have is the somerset stages and I see the entry list for that isnt as good as previous years.

[MrJan]

I don't know the reasons behind the lack of rallying on Haldon, I was told that it was no longer used by someone on another forum who was involved in organising the event. I made a post asking why it had been moved to Cornwall and he said that there would be no more rallying in Haldon forest.

Rallying in the SW is very poor. I generally get to a number of events each year of which the Sunseeker in Bournemouth and the Somerset stages are the easiest to get to, otherwise it involves a trip to foreign lands and £5 to get across the Severn Bridge for the Wydean or the three or so main rallies held on Epynt which is about two and a half hours away. But it's been like that for years, I can only remember actually going to a handful of rallies in Devon that weren't up on Smeatharpe.

[FAL]

Haldon was lost to other users of the forest - horse riding, walkers, (and probably mountain bikers too, like far too many of the classic Welsh stages of the old days). To get round this, Haldon was only rallied at night for some years but now not at all.
With the cancellation of the Kent Forestry Stages for lack of entries, people might at last begin to understand that the fundamental problem is that there are no longer enough club level gravel cars in the south to make events viable. (the Somerset Stages has relied on BTRDA championship status for many years to get enough entries) With fewer events, fewer people in the south at club level found it viable to have forest cars, quite apart from rising costs.
One basic reason for this was the loss of Salisbury Plain (3 loose rallies a year at one time) in the aftermath of the end of the cold war and the return of most of the Army from being based in and training in Germany and needing more training in the UK.
Another was the elevation of the event that is now the Sunseeker to National championship status, using up the only central southern forest allocation and making it unaffordable to most clubmen, along with the current Tempest using the only other southern forests (and a much reduced portion of them for usual development reasons) also in a costly event that was at one time even an International round of the Brit Championship.
Business interests in the sport selling out the true clubmen...

[Bolton Midnight]

Sunseeker, Somerset & Carpetbagger is pretty good considering how few crews there are down there.

Newton Abbott was used for the 2005 Peugeot Challenge, something daft like 17 stages of 1½ miles long, and crap crayola maps, seemed a bit Mickey Mouse to me, so we missed it out.