Rally De La Sal

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Classic car club Ibiza

Every 2nd Sunday of the month the classic car club meet at the Casi Todo Cafe in Santa Gertrudis.

 

 

 

Every year at Easter there is a huge regatta involving well over a hundred yachts racing from mainland Spain to Ibiza. They race over the route followed by the salt traders who brought the salt to the mainland from Ibiza's 'Salinas'. For the last couple of years the local Classic Car Club have chosen this occasion to stage their own rally on land. This year we went along, armed with a pencil, to see what it was all about:-

It was an overcast Easter Thursday morning threatening rain at the Botafoch Marina in front of El Divino. A tent announces the presence of the 'Village de la Sal', but apart from a row of beautiful classic cars, there's nobody around? Fortunately a tiny bar overflowing with early morning coffee drinkers allays our fears that we've arrived at the wrong venue. Only half an hour later than planned the assembled drivers and navigators congregate around the hat to pull out names and thus determine the line up on the grid for this intriguing race around the island. Your intrepid reporters, neither of whom have done anything like this before, find themselves in the passenger seats of two of the participating cars armed with a stop watch, a confusing sheet of paper covered with dots and arrows and instructions to spend the journey looking at the mileometer!

The roar of large if elderly engines signals the start of proceedings and I count my blessings from the passenger seat of one of the oldest cars on the grid - a beautiful cream Porsche 365 - in which I sit alongside Karel, who came second in last years rally. The cars roar off at one minute intervals and the race is on.

My over-confidence evaporates at the first dot and arrow on the sheet of paper in my hand - we've missed the first junction and find ourselves on the Ibiza ring road. Karel puts the Porsche through her paces and we're soon back on track and making up lost time. The dots and arrows take us cross-country past Santa Eulalia, through San Miguel, then to San Juan via Portinatx as I focus on the mileometer. Occasionally concentration is broken as we collapse in laughter on encountering another competitor coming down our road in the wrong direction - or are we going in the wrong direction? At one point we miss another turn, but the three cars following us obviously have more faith in my navigating than Karel and I. We stop, turn around and retrace our steps much to their consternation. A quick burst of acceleration back to our missed turn off and we should lose them. We chuckle at the sight of three cars attempting three-point turns in a narrow camino in our rear view mirror.

 

However, one of the major problems with cross-country rallying is that you have to maintain an average speed over the course. In this case 40 km/ (25 mph) which is a tad difficult in a high powered sports car. Other motorists look at us in alarm as they overtake us crawling down the road, perhaps worried that we've blown up our engine and are about to be left stranded on top of a mountain above San Juan?

We arrive in San Juan at the penultimate junction and there's a problem, we've lost ten kilometres somewhere on a road with no turn offs? Could this be the equivalent of a trick question in rallying parlance or has the mileometer broken down? We quickly recalculate the time that we should be arriving in Cala San Vicente and find it impossible to drive the last four miles slowly enough - we arrive three minutes early. Fortunately the Alfa Romeo that arrived before us had spotted the ten kilometre discrepancy too, so my navigational skills are vindicated. One of the later arrivals had driven round and round in circles to make up the extra ten kilometres!

A hilarious lunch of paella overlooking Cala San Vicente beach was spent swapping tales of who got lost where as new friendships were forged in common appreciation of the good time being had by all - rather than the expected well informed discussion of the finer points of the internal combustion engine. Nobody asked who was winning, nor how on earth anybody was ever going to work it out?

After lunch a spontaneous swimming race would not have come as a surprise, however the real surprise turns out to be that somebody had worked out that our Porsche is winning this 'non-race', at least for the moment.

The afternoon leg of the rally took us through Es Canar and past Roca Llisa on our way back to the marina at what felt like break neck speed. The average speed to maintain for the afternoon had been increased to 50 km/h and the difference that this made was remarkable. We all seemed to be almost flat out in order to arrive back in time.

Easter Friday and in the best Ibiza tradition it's raining. Despite broken windscreen wipers I manage to hide my shoddy Citroen near to the port and make the starting line to rejoin Karel in the Porsche with almost a minute to spare! This time we're cross-country to Santa Gertrudis and the off-road speed trials. The average speed this time is 45 km/h so we arrive early and have to cover the last half mile in three minutes, which means rolling very slowly down the last hill to time our arrival correctly. It's wet and miserable which means conditions are perfect for sliding the cars between the tightly arranged cones and the winners are seperated only by milliseconds. Another lunch this time courtesy of Casi Todo in Santa Gertrudis is followed by two further races to Es Cubells, then back to the Village de la Sal.

Basically, this was a fabulous example of grown men and women enjoying a protracted game together and having at least, if not more fun than a playground full of children! As any of the competitors would readily admit, the aim of the exercise is not the winning, but the participation. Time to buy a classic car and join this fantastic, yet frivolous, club?