‘Hard work’ rewarded as Guernsey Rally gets the go-ahead
The Guernsey Rally 2025 will be ‘go, go, go!’ in just over a month’s time, after finally getting approval from the States.
The seven-stage event will mostly be spread across the island’s rural parishes from Friday 28 February and Saturday 1 March, with the Rally Club expecting to publish stage details in mid-February.
Approximately 40 cars from Guernsey, Jersey and the UK are set to take part, with properties and any businesses adjoining the stage routes to receive final confirmation of the arrangements from the organisers imminently.
The rally started in 2018 and was last held in 2023, with more than 30 participants.
However, that year’s event saw much protest against its staging, with cancellation of a section in Torteval due to a resident lying down in the road in front of the cars, and the Felconte stages being vandalised.
More recently, the 2024 rally was denied approval by Environment & Infrastructure when it announced a ban on events requiring multiple road closures.
Guernsey Rally chairman Karl Marshall said he was both happy and relieved at news of the States’ confirmation of this year’s event, adding the organisers’ focus would now shift to PR work and getting the stages finalised.
‘Traffic & Highway Services have helped massively, it’s been a joint effort in getting everything sorted and a lot of very hard work.’
While unable to confirm the exact locations of the stages at this time, Mr Marshall said the routes would take in ‘five or six’ parishes, with ‘quite a few’ changes to the previous rally routes two years ago.
The rally will get under way at 1.30pm on the Friday, and will run until 4.30pm before stopping and starting again at 6pm, continuing until about 9.30pm.
It will then resume at 8am on the Saturday, running until 5pm.
When asked whether he thought the rally would receive backlash this time around, Mr Marshall said he did not know what to expect, but added that so far, not many people had been against it.
‘We are still a few weeks away so there’s still time for people to come forward I guess, but it all seems quite positive so far so let’s see how we go.’
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