![Stuart and Emily Anderson in a 1937 Bentley Derby 4¼-litre Classic & Sports Car – Six seize gold on silver-jubilee Le Jog](/sites/default/files/styles/article/public/2019-12/Classic%20%26%20Sports%20Car%20%E2%80%93%20Le%20Jog%202019%20%E2%80%93%201.png?itok=_80pmYjh)
On 7 December, 82 crews from 10 countries took the start of HERO’s gruelling 25th-anniversary Le Jog; four days, three nights, 1500 miles and very little sleep later, just 64 crossed the finish line.
The rally was characteristically testing from the off.
Leg one, Land’s End to Magor in Wales and the Caerwent military ground, saw chaos for the vintage contenders running out front after the Bodmin Moor regularity, with six cars stopped together at different angles while trying to determine the correct route. Come the end of the leg, seven crews provisionally had gold medals, six silver and nine bronze.
![Paul Dyas/Martyn Taylor, Volvo Amazon, Le Jog 2019 Classic & Sports Car – Six seize gold on silver-jubilee Le Jog](/sites/default/files/2019-12/Classic%20%26%20Sports%20Car%20%E2%80%93%20Le%20Jog%202019%20%E2%80%93%203.png)
Paul Dyas and Martyn Taylor took their Amazon to gold
Driving rain and high winds battered entrants on leg two, running from Saturday evening until the early hours of Sunday, and even photographer Will Broadhead and team were called upon, pulling Martin Burhenne and Axel von Blittersdorff’s Mini out of a ditch.
An acute hairpin through a gate just wide enough for a vintage Bentley caught many out and just a few miles shy of the finish in Ewloe, Flintshire, Thomas and his father Roger Bricknell suffered a puncture in their 1983 Volkswagen Golf GTI.