A pair of motoring enthusiasts with a combined age of 167 years old have completed the Raid dell’Etna car rally in Scilly.

Priscilla Llewelyn from Abergavenny and David Filsell from Brecon set off on Wednesday September 21 in their red 1960’s MGA convertible to arrive in Scilly before the rally began on Saturday September 25.

They were the only British team to enter this year and they travelled for a total of six days by car and ferry to participate.

Raid dell’Etna is a vintage and classic car rally which involves participants to compete a series of tests assessing the driver’s skill.

The tests involved driving from one checkpoint to another within a specific period of time .

Priscilla took on the role of driver as David navigated using the complicated instructions and map.

Despite David’s experience and Priscilla’s driving ability they admitted that they initially struggled with the complexity of this particular rally.

David said: “My previous experience was useless even though I have been doing rallies since the 1950s.

“This was unlike anything I’ve ever one before and It was quite confusing; I couldn’t get my head around it.

“We were complete novices because we had never done a rally like this one before.”

“We were at a slight disadvantage straight way because most of the other competitors had done it before”

Priscilla said: “The tests they set were difficult and we only managed to do some of them correctly.

“It doesn’t help that the directions given are often very confusing and made more difficult because we had to convert eveything from miles to kilometres, without any devices to do this really accurately.”

In the classic and vintage rallies of the United Kingdom, using electronics to help with tasks like this isn’t allowed and therefore Priciscilla and David had not gone equipped with the hi tech equipmentthey would have been allowed to make use of during this competition.

Despite the challenges they enjoyed luxury stop overs in palaces around Scilly where they recovered during the 500 mile drive and found themselves escorted by police wherever they went during the week. This however, was not always an advantage as on the first day the police escorted them straight past the timed trial meaning they missed the test of the day.

They eventually finished the rally on Saturday October 2 placing 37th and winning a trophy and a plate.

David said: “We won a cup and a plate for being the best team but even that was quite confusing.

“We think it could have been because we were the oldest team or the team that had travelled the furthest.”

Priscilla claims their success was down to David’s brains.

She said: “David’s a qualified mathematician - without him we wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

The pair plan to complete more rallies in the future but will be sticking to the competitions in this country.

Priscilla said: “We are now both retired and I think it’s so good for people our age to go out and do this instead of sitting in an armchair.

“The journey home was rather long and exhausting after such a busy week, but we felt happy with our efforts and we wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”