Peter Bryant

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"It must have been quite an adventure - and occasionally a shock - for the mature, intellectual Peter Bryant to occupy my co-driver's seat during those formative years of my career. One thing I dare say: he did have the prime seat to observe the learnig and growing-up process that I went through.

Peter is a big, well read fellow who ran a successful sand-blasting business. I often used to stay in his batchelor aparment in Craydon staring through the window at the grey wall on the opposite side of the narrow alley. It was a far cry from the lush countryside of Finnish Carelia.

Although Peter joined me through Ford, he was not that experienced as a co-driver and foreign events particularly were probably almost as novel to him as they were to me. Still, he had a far wider outlook on life than I did in those days and that made him a very good sparring partner for me. For a co-driver he was too heavy, but he made up for that with his brain.

I grew to greatly appreciate his deep-thinking conversation: with cultivated Peter you could talk about anything and that was very useful at a time when my English was still fairly elementary.

Actually, I've got Peter to thank for marrying Rita! If we hadn't missed a passage control that put us out of the 1978 RAC Rally, I would not have ended up in London with Rita and... well, the rest is history. A little later Peter became Godfather to our daughter Ria.

These days, the only complaint I have against Peter is the fact that he's hopeless to get in touch with!"