As soon as I learned to drive at the age of 17 I was hooked on cars. Within a year I had been introduced to stage and road rallying by the owner of the local car accessory shop in Pickering - Pete Myers. He had been a successful rally driver and encouraged myself and others to become active in motorsport.

I prepared my own rally car, an L reg Mini Clubman, with the help of Pete and friends and was competing in rallies within a year of passing my driving test.

I competed in numerous special stage and road rallies in Minis during the mid to late eighties.

During this time I actually had two identical Minis. One was a road rally car and the other was my stage rally car. The road car had a 1430 engine with metro gearing for top speed. The rally car had a 'full race' 1000cc engine with a pocketed block and Cooper S head. Both were the same colour and both shared a number of other features which I won't go into.

In late 1987 I decided to swap from Minis to Astras, mainly because Minis were becoming uncompetative and the Vauxhall Astras and Novas were the cars to have. Also I was getting fed up of rebuilding my engines - three bearing cranks - never again.

A great 1.3S Astra came up fully stage rally prepared and I thought I was onto a winner. The car had a fully tuned 1.3 engine, 5 speed box with a 40% LSD - it was fun, fun, fun to drive. Unfortunately within 7 weeks of buying the car, and before I had driven a single stage mile, I wrote it off.

I had been traveling along a woody road and must have lost control before hitting 3 trees in quick succession. I woke up in hospital and don't remember a thing about the accident till this day. Naturally this put paid to my rallying career for a while.

Once my finances recovered I purchased a tidy Opel Kadett 1.3SR and competed in many road rallies with it. In the meantime I also did a spot of navigation for my navigator who had bought my old mini - confusing eh ?

My rallying career came to an end in 1990 when I moved due to work. I had to move out of my parents house, leaving my garage behind, and never found the time to take up the sport again.