At the moment we have planned to do nothing

A little bit guilty but we did 4 days in 2007 and 2006 so not too quilty.

Who knows we may get out and watch a bit - maybe

News from the stages ... well one stage - Rheola....

What a perfect winter's day as far as weather is concerned... You could see for miles from on top of the hills !

Stage has been resurfaced in many places it is very firm and mostly very dry and dusty ... only wet by the open quarry on top (J8-10) other areas of the stage that might be wet stay frozen all day !! It will be nice if the weather stays like this but I think Rain is forecast from Wednesday.

Today was spent putting the official road / path closure notices up and the stakes out for all the junctions, Numbers, Arrows and boards will go out late Tues or Weds very early before Recce, they have to be taken down again after recce as they will get pinched / destoryed if left up !

Thurday... busy day but I didn't get in the Forests until 14:00 !

This morning I went to the top of resolven were the South Wales regional HQ is based (best placed for Radio Signals) with the Stage commander to corrct a load of equipment (generators, lights, heater for the Cabin for Stage HQ and other goodies) Resolven was very Frozen - combination of Frozen Ground, frozen melted snow from yesterday and then an 1"-1.5" of Snow / slush on top (I now understand whey they had so many problems in there yesterday on Recce!!!) It was interesting following Gary (SC) in the Transit and me in the Disco watching him getting broad side and lots of opposite lock at 15/20mph !!

After that it was down to the main road which the start and finish is accessed from putting up the no parking / tow truck in operation / forest closed / resident only signs... After that it was back in the Forest to join up with the rest of the Stage team building Spectator areas (there are very strict rules and layouts set out in the safety plan that we have to follow). Rheola was in a much better condition as it gets more sun than Resolven and is a feew hundred feet lower than Resolven....

Tomorrow is a bit more stage set up and then running the starts on the Walters spectator stage - should be interesting as they do two runs after each other so we will have cars starting at 30 second intervals, not previously done on the WRC and and the timing equipment can't cope with it so it will be back to tradition countdown and flag starts for SS8 with a reliance on mobile phones & radio to get the start and finish times to Cardiff so they can calculate the time taken !

Nope I'm on mid-safety 2 - Junction 21.....

You're talking about J5 ...and I guess a walk down to J6 (90ish L big drop on the outside and car size gap in the trees .... very slippery !)-J7

You'll have to walk through the trees before you get there!!!!

PS.  As you may of heard Hafren & Sweet lamb have been shortened due to weather ... there was also talk today about whether resolven will run or not (given they expect temp to rise it should be ok) the issue is not the condition for competitors but getting the 400+ marshals into the stage ! 

Interesting fact.... (well not that interesting) there's approx 500 marshal's registered for Rheola on Sunday and 241 registered for Walters on Friday... a 1.5 mile (2.4km) Stage !!!!