We went down to the woods today!

Well Greystoke Forest actually, and a lot of people were surprised, particularly the teacher who turned up with a group wanting to go mountain biking.

The forest is owned by M-sport who as well as running it as a commercial forest use it for testing their rally cars. R my cousins husband (DerwentLass) was marshalling and kindly volunteered to take us in with him. The forest is opento the public at all times. However when they are testing the forest tracks they are using are closed for obvious reasons. The dates are always publicised in advance. Even so the marshals bent over backwards to make sure walkers,runners and even the cyclists could get where they wanted to.

They were only testing a single car but we were in the forest from 7.45 am until 6.00 pm The marshal in charge very kindly placed R on a check point where he felt we would have a good chance of getting good photos. There was no problem knowing when the car was coming, the circuit was 6 miles long and we could hear the car all the way round!

As you can imagine there was no shortage of opportunities for photos but somehow a still of a car going sideways round corner looks exactly like what it is and doesn't (for me)give the feeling of the excitement. So I chose this shot of the car throwing up mud and stones as it straightened out and poured on power after the corner.