My lovely wife-to-be dropped a bombshell the other night, "I wouldn't mind going to a car event actually" when discussing potential weekend breaks.

I've always wanted to attend a good rally stage and WRC Wales (14-16th Nov) is looking very tempting.

Having never been to one before though, I'm honestly pretty clueless as to how one gets the best out of a weekend like this. Tickets are £99 each for a full pass, so I wouldn't want to waste a penny.

Any seasoned rallyists here?

I recommend booking your accommodation now as my friends went there 2 years ago and booked 3 months ahead to find everywhere local was fully booked already.So they ended up commuting 50 miles each way, just to get there and back. They did say it was a great experience. However one who went, that came to Spa for the F1 last year with me said the F1 was much better!

Hi great choice for a "romantic" weekend away

I have not been for 20 odd years so cant really give you any accurate info but what we did was..

1 Leave home about midnight (this was when it started in Scotland, dont think they do that now) so probably leave around 3 in the morning
2 arrive at the first stage
3 find a good place to stand, where you think there will be loads of crashes
4 If no crashes move around the circuit (be prepared to have to run and dive into ditches to avoid being squashed by rally cars)
5 We would then miss the next stage and get to the one after
6 end the evening at the finishing point usually a super stage in a town (last one i went to was in Chester we managed to meet a few of the Rally drivers too
7 repeat above until she wants to kill you for thinking of a Rally weekend!

P.S. we kipped (tried to!!) in the car, so basically did not get any slepp the whole weekend

But it was brilliant fun, all had a great time with loads of good memories

If you go Have a great time!

Thanks for the tips guys, really appreciate it

I remember traveling between stages back in the Group B days and having the competitor cars mixing it with the road traffic as they made there way too. Flipping brilliant, felt like you were in the rally too

Yes definitely it was amazing I started going in 1991 start of McRae and 4x4 cossies, there were still loads of mk1 escort mexico's about plus a trabant or two even a Sierra xr4x4 which I had at the time so that made me happy!
the only thing to watch is there is a general lack of regard to people cars especially from the guys competing and back in the 90's you would be lucky to get a fiat coupe to some of the car parks my brothers RS turbo s1 virtually scraped its underside all the way to the car parks I do hope you are going in somebody else's car!

We'll be taking the missus Focus I imagine.

Was also thinking of maybe combining it with a visit to the Snowdonia national park - maybe just pitching up at the rally for Sundays finale.

Make sure you take warm clothes and a thermos flask. My first stage i ever saw was sweet lamb. Just by chance I was driving home and saw the signs so just stopped and watched. I really enjoyed it. Agree that you can have your own mini rally stage trying to get to the car parks. I went back with friends the next year and when driving back from the car park in my old 16vt on gravel I managed to execute a perfect handbrake turn around a hairpin corner with 4 blokes in the car. Stupid, reckless and dangerous I know, but for that couple of seconds I felt like a rally God!
We also went to the super special stage as well. The car park was just as entertaining as some guy was doing doughnuts in his impreza. I would imagine that sort of behaviour Is clamped down now.