Planning a rally route

Good events aren't planned from a blank map — they're planned backwards from roads worth driving. Here's how organisers find them, join them up, and prove them.

Start with the roads, not the route

Ask any organiser where a route came from and the honest answer is usually "years of noticing". A flowing lane over a ridge, a junction that genuinely tests a navigator, a valley road that's a joy at a gentle pace — they get noticed on ordinary drives and kept somewhere. That's the real first step: collect roads all year, then plan the event as a necklace — the good roads are the beads, and the route is just the thread that joins them in a sensible order.

Shape the day

From there it's arithmetic and mercy. A workable shape usually means:

• A loop from a sensible base — somewhere with parking, breakfast and toilets, because an event is hospitality as well as roads.
• Sections a crew can concentrate through — long enough to settle into, short enough that a mistake doesn't ruin the day.
• Fuel and coffee where they're needed, not where the route happens to go. Older cars drink; older crews too.
• Daylight honesty — if the last section runs at dusk, plan it on roads that are kind in the dark.
• A strong opener and a strong closer. Crews forgive a dull middle mile; they remember how the day started and ended.

Keep it lawful — and kind

On the public road, normal traffic law applies to every car in the event, so the timing side of a road rally is built around modest average speeds and precision, not pace — the test is holding time to the second, never making it up. Organised events on public roads generally also need permission: clubs run them under their national motorsport body's authorisation process (in Britain, Motorsport UK), which looks at the route itself. Ask early — it can reshape the roads you're allowed to use, and it's far cheaper to learn that before the roadbook exists than after.

Recce every mile

Maps lie by omission. They don't show the new gate, the fresh gravel, the mud a dairy herd leaves at 4pm, the junction that reads as a fork on the ground but a crossroads on paper. So the route isn't real until you've driven every mile of it — ideally recording as you go, so the exact line comes home with you, with photos and voice notes pinned at anything that made you slow down and look. That recording becomes the honest backbone for everything that follows: the distances, the diagrams, the cautions.

Then make the book

A proved line is only half the job — the other half is turning it into the document crews actually navigate by. That's its own craft, with its own guide: how to make a rally roadbook. The short version: pick the junctions that matter, draw a clear tulip for each, measure the distances off the recorded line, and check the lot against the track before anyone else sees it.