Gloomy skies and light drizzle did not dampen spirits at the start of day one. Shaun Harborne and Mike Cochrane are the first away in the much travelled 1924 Red Label Bentley, the flag wielded by the chairman of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Team, the 2026 Three Castles charity.

Wednesday was a day of changes. A damp, grey start to the first day of the rally did not auger well but at various points in what followed, the clouds cleared leaving bright spring sunshine, albeit with gusty winds.  There were other changes too, the day beginning with CLO’s issuing an amendment to the road book due to emergency road works on one planned section.  That would come later though and the first part of the route took the rally out along the coast to Little Orme Bay, past Penrhyn and Rhos.  The journey continued to hug the shore on the A55 dual carriageway but only as far as Abergele where it followed signs for Rhuddlan and the A547. Rhuddlan Castle’s round towers were off to the right as the route crossed the River Clwyd then, once through and beyond the centre of the town it was time for the first regularity section on minor roads with a linking section on a B road.

At around five and half miles the first regularity was the shortest of the day, making for a gentle introduction that led pretty swiftly on to the first test of the day at Lleweni airfield, one of five on day one and possibly the most complex of the entire event. The cocktail of more than twenty instructions included slaloms, stop-astride, cones, splits and merges made up one and half ‘laps’ of the perimeter and resulted in a few competitors finding themselves in the wrong place after a mistake or misinterpretation of the test instructions.  One crew later reported that in their car, terms like left, right and stop had lost much of their meaning by the end of the test!  With a minimum time of two minutes and forty eight seconds the pace was brisk too, which probably made the road section towards Denbigh that followed feel relaxing.

The respite was limited to five miles before the second regularity began. Six and a half miles this time, a passage control where the route passed Moel Arthur Hill Fort in another area rich in ancient history; the landscape dotted with more Tumuli, earthworks and a stone circle. There is nothing much to suggest that beneath the surface is an extensive network of tunnels built during the cold war but never pressed into active service.

The regularity ended at Rhes-y-Cae, less than three miles from the next test at Midlist, known locally as the Buffalo Farm, though the animals are no longer reared there.  A short test, it involved a 360 degree turn around a cone that, predictably, some cars found more challenging than others.  Small was definitely better - which would never have applied to the buffalos. The mid morning coffee stop at Tower was only a further six miles.   Notorious as the site of the fifteenth century hanging of the former mayor of Chester in a dispute over allegiance to King Edward, it has a fascinating history and architecture that is unique in North Wales, the barrel roof made of stone making it impervious to attack by flaming arrows.  Not so prevalent now, it is obvious some change is for the better.