It’s 2am. I’m covered in mud, freezing cold and up to my car door handles in icy water. With only seven hours’ sleep in the past three days I am too tired to protest, and if we get out of this river we have another two hours of driving before I find my bed.

Through the side window I watch the swollen river rushing by at a rate of knots, carrying with it large branches from further upstream. I can feel the car’s wheels spinning hopelessly on the gravel bed, straining for purchase, and despite the exhaustion I begin to worry that unless we get out soon we will be swept away with those bits of tree.

The reason I am in this rapidly deteriorating situation is that I’m taking part in the Lombard Rally, an event whose roots are back in the competitive Lombard RAC Rallies of the 1970s. It is billed as the ultimate civilian race, in which private individuals can take part with a minimum of fuss and training. The principle is simple: take one hatchback, strip out the interior, bolt in a roll cage and you’re ready to go.

It sounds deceptively easy, and the organisers maintain that because engine sizes are limited to 1400cc and mechanical modifications are kept to a minimum, anyone can take part in their own car. I had naively envisaged four days of touring 1,200 miles of Gloucestershire and Wales with a bit of off-road fun thrown in to keep things interesting.

Rewind 72 hours to the beginning of the rally and I’m on the start line at Gaydon, Warwickshire, with Penny Mallory, a former women’s World Rally champion. Mallory has already slipped into the trance-like state that all motor sport drivers can access, one that combines total focus with supreme confidence. I, on the other hand, am a bundle of nerves, and the only things I am focusing on are the increasingly gruesome rally crashes that I’ve witnessed over the years on TV. Our car is an MG ZR kitted out with racing seats, four-point harnesses rather than conventional seatbelts, off-road tyres and a specially strengthened chassis. And there’s a fire extinguisher, just in case.

If I were just along for the ride, this wouldn’t be a problem, but as I’m the navigator, it is. I have to communicate with Mallory constantly, advising her of upcoming hazards, signalling the road ahead with shouted instructions of “hard left, hard right, flat-out straight” and – just as importantly – cooling her down when the red mist descends and starts to make her driving reckless.

This is a crucial job. Although the majority of rally miles are on the public highway, and therefore subject to normal speed limits, teams pick up penalty points for arriving at any one of the checkpoints too early, too late, or from the wrong direction. The result is that even on public roads the navigator, with one eye on the stopwatch and one eye on the map, can never relax.

While road users around you are on the school run or dashing out to the shops, you are relentlessly engaged in a highly competitive event. Tricky as this is, it’s nothing compared with the flat-out stages – the selectifs – that take place on closed roads or gravel forest tracks. Here the organisers set a modest average speed, but despite the absence of speed limits and oncoming traffic it is impossible to achieve the target time. Every second over target results in more penalties, so the question is not so much one of “Will I be penalised?”. as “By how much will I be penalised?” Clip a cone, fail to stop astride the finish line or take a wrong entry into a chicane, and the points continue to mount.

Over the years Mallory has worked with some of the best navigators in the country – clever, organised people who remain utterly unflappable. This time she has me, and out of the other 119 teams that have come from all over Europe to take part I look the most nervous.

Still, no time to dwell: five, four, three, two, one, and it’s go! We scream off the start line and I’m thrown back in my seat then pushed forward into my harness as Mallory hits the brakes into the first corner. As she does this I drop my impeccably prepared notes into the footwell and my pen slips under the seat. This means that not only am I a klutz, but Mallory is now driving the first selectif blind.

If things started poorly, they are soon to get much worse. The second selectif is more complicated: a shriek of “turn left” from me should have been “turn right”, so soon we are facing the wrong way up a dead end, the marshals have spotted our error, the timing devices are confirming our delay and just like that we pick up the maximum penalty points.

As we park the car for the night we are languishing in 88th place. I feel my career as a navigator is over. However, endurance rallying is all about tenacity, and as one competitor chirpily reminds me over next day’s 6am breakfast: “To finish first, first you have to finish.”

With three days and 1,000 miles still to cover, taking in mountains and moorland, hill climbs and forests, we still have time left in which to improve our position – provided I don’t confuse my left with my right again.

At close of play on day two we have fought back to 55th place, mid-table, still running and in with a chance. Day three, and with Mallory really flying we are continuing to make up places. Ominously, we pass car after car that has slid off the road. Some look okay, others are just tail lights in the forest undergrowth. Stories of ravines and tow trucks meet us at every checkpoint, and the Lombard is clearly taking its toll.

Day four, and we have fought up to 28th place. We are exhausted, but with the car in good shape and just 25 miles of selectif stages to run, I conclude that we could practically push the car over the finish line.

And now the next important lesson about rally driving: never, ever, assume that you are home and dry. We had managed to drive out of that flooded river, which we later discovered claimed nine cars because of heavy rain earlier in the day.

We had taken our lives in our hands by overtaking other competitors on single-track gravel roads and had narrowly avoided a collision with a pile of timber while travelling at 60mph.

But 300 yards into the penultimate forest stage, fate intervenes. The engine of our MG says “enough is enough”, and with a loud bang and a plume of black smoke it seizes solid. Instead of a living, pulsing, roaring machine working for our benefit, it has become one large lump of pig iron. With that our rally has ground to a shuddering halt.

As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones to drop out with mechanical failure. Of the 120 teams that started, only 77 finished, and to be honest, given the nature of the cars taking part and the toughness of the route, that was a minor miracle.

But here’s the odd thing: as I sat dejected and cold, waiting for the ignominy of the tow truck and chewing on my last chocolate bar somewhere on a mountain in Wales, I was already planning my 2008 assault on the Lombard Rally.

Checkpoints

- The current Lombard Rally is a revivalist event for amateur drivers. It was inspired by the Lombard RAC Rally, which formed the British round of the World Rally Championship (WRC) between 1974 and 1992. Cars are limited to a maximum engine capacity of 1400cc

- The original RAC Rally took place in 1932 and was the first major rally in Britain. More than 300 teams started from nine towns around Britain and had to drive along fixed routes, each about 1,000 miles long, to Torquay, arriving at a predetermined time

- The period when the race was known as the Lombard RAC Rally, after its main sponsor, is regarded as the golden age of rally driving. Winners included Hannu Mikkola and Roger Clark

- The professional rally is now sponsored by the Welsh Development Agency. It forms one leg of the WRC and is known as Wales Rally GB

-This year’s amateur Lombard Rally covered about 1,200 miles over four days. Of the 120 cars that started, 77 finished. Jason Dawe and Penny Mallory were competing on behalf of TreeHouse, a charity that raises awareness of autism. Funds raised through the rally will support TreeHouse’s new National Centre for Autism Education in London. For more information see www.treehouse.org.uk

Explore Driving

• Jeremy Clarkson

• New Car Reviews

• Used Car Reviews

• News

• Features

• In The Showroom

• Buying Guide

• Car Clinic