National Rally; July 2003
Team Fuzzball
Steve Palmer, Alan Brown and myself entered the 2002 National Rally as a team. Did we do it again for 2003? Of course we did. This time with the late addition of one Dave Sanford. If you want to know how it went then read on.
If you read last year's write-up then you'll know that Steve came in for a bit of ribbing about his strict regime of flossing and brushing his teeth no matter what the time of day and setting. In honour of Steve's dedication to his teeth on last year's Rally we named this year's team Fuzzball. A short explanation is required here. A fuzzball is a spiky ball you put in your mouth and chew. Apparently it does the same job as flossing and brushing (but don't try it with your helmet on)!
The Rally rules were changed a bit this year. Instead of having one big zone containing all of the controls they decided to have four smaller zones of two types, i.e. outer and inner zones. There were three outer zones mapped to the north, south and east of England. (No west outer zone because it's an English Rally and west is Wales.) There was a single inner zone mapped to central England. The controls in the outer zones were given a letter designation and the controls in the inner zone were given number designations.
The idea was to chose one of the outer zones to start from and finish in the inner zone at the control Uttoxeter, control 99. The controls in the outer zone closed at midnight and the controls in the inner zone opened at 2200. Once you crossed from the outer zone to the inner zone you were not allowed to go back to the outer zone. Also, you were only allowed to use one outer zone. The rest of the rules were pretty much the same. That is:-
- Start Saturday 5th July at 1400 and finish before 1000 Sunday 6th July.
- Find and follow a route of exactly 540 designated miles containing the maximum number of controls between the route's starting control and the route's end control Uttoxeter.
Credit goes to Alan for finding our route shown below. He also did much of the planning for the legs between controls.
One of the problems the Rally has is that it's not unusual for some of the groups that had agreed to man controls to drop out at the last minute. What the organisers have to do is designate unmanned controls as virtual controls. With a virtual control you don't actually need to go through it. You just turn up at the succeeding control and ask them to stamp your card twice. Now some of us in the team (Alan) thought it was fine to do this and some of us (me) thought it was cheating a bit. In particular, Reading was a virtual control and bypassing it would knock about 30 to 40 miles off the trip. After some debate Alan let me have my way. Later on in the Rally I wished he hadn't.
As we were a bit late starting in 2002 we decided to meet in good time (1130) at the Ashley Heath Little Chef. We also had to take account of the fact that Dave had something to do with work he wanted to drop off on the way to Amesbury. (That man never stops working.) It turned out that Dave wasn't too sure of his delivery route (bad omen) so it was just as well we left in good time. When we arrived at Porton Down I did wonder what Dave was delivering. The guards there put Dave on the right track and we eventually got to Amesbury for lunch at a Little Chef. Now you might like to know that Little Chef were doing an offer that saved us quite a bit of cash over the weekend. Dave boy had worked out that if you buy a £2.99 road atlas from the Little Chef you can use the voucher in it to get a second meal free. 'Mange tout, mon ami' as Dave boy would say. We came home with a road atlas each.
I think the only one of us who looked refreshed when we turned up was Alan. Dave and Steve had obviously had a hard week and next door to me decided to have a loud party the night before so I was not too chirpy. Feeling knackered at the start, I suggested we didn't need to bother to go through the virtual controls after all but Alan was having none of it. The man is cruel and the pictures of me at Reading and Burford prove it.
The first part of the Rally went well and as expected we found we had plenty of time (3 hours) to rest up waiting for our first control in the inner zone (Worcester) to open up at 2200. You see, whether they meant to do it or not the organisers had arranged for a very easy day stage to be followed by a fairly difficult night stage. The reason for this was that in just under half the time (Saturday 1400 to Saturday 2200) we went through about a third of the controls. This meant that in just over half the time (Saturday 2200 to Sunday 1000) we had to go through just under two thirds of the controls.
Things got a bit desperate during the night and at one point we were on schedule to finish at Sunday 1100, i.e. about an hour late. The legs between controls seemed much longer than their designated miles would suggest and some of the controls were difficult to find. Stratford was particularly difficult to find. We felt we were making good progress but we still seemed to be struggling to make up time.
The final legs of the route were Ashbourne to Buxton, Buxton to Congleton, Congleton to Stoke and Stoke to Uttoxeter, I was leading on the leg to Buxton and unfortunately I probably took us a good 15 to 20 miles out of our way. I have to take the blame but I must admit I did get a bum steer from the local lad (Alan grew up around Buxton).
We ended up on one of the most gorgeous twisty roads I have ever come across. I was really enjoying myself riding down this road and pretty much forgot I was on the Rally. So much so that I didn't notice Alan had been trying to stop me for a few miles.
The detour on the way to Buxton was demoralising as we lost all the time we had made up and were now only just on schedule to finish at 2200. Some of us were very tired and it didn't look like we were going to leave Buxton as a team at one point. The control at Congleton was a MacDonalds and it was suggested to one exhausted team member that he get a happy meal, have an extended fag break and wait for us to come back for him after we had finished at Uttoxeter. (I think I might have given away who I'm talking about?) Needless to say, motivated by this insult and Alan's single-minded obsession to finish (with or without any of us it seemed) he carried on to the finish.
A bit after 0900 and with much relief we all made it to Uttoxeter race course. We claimed our Platinum awards and had the traditional end of Rally fry-up. Dave went for a wander around the racecourse (probably to replenish his nicotine levels) while the rest of us headed for the rest room.
The rest room turned out to be a huge exhibition type room with nothing but a plush carpet in it. The room was full of snoring, belching and farting bikers who had just finished the Rally. The room had quite an aroma to it. Pretty soon, the three of us were contributing to the noise. Mostly snoring. As per last year, Steve was very difficult to rouse. A racecourse like Uttoxeter is an excellent place to finish. The weather had been excellent for motorcycling all through the Rally. Fine and dry without being too hot.
The trip was not quite over as we had decided to stay in a guesthouse in Church Stretton on Sunday night. For anyone that's contemplating doing the Rally in the future I wouldn't recommend riding home on the Sunday afternoon. We stopped off at Iron Bridge just south of Telford on the way to Church Stretton. Church Stretton is a nice town surrounded by some lovely countryside and the guest house was very comfortable. We cleaned up, walked into town and celebrated with a few beers and a curry. A very enjoyable evening if I recall correctly. A very nice pub barmaid even gave me £10 towards my charity. (In case anyone is interested in sponsoring me it's not too late as I'm doing the Scottish Rally in September for the same charity, i.e. Barry Sheene's Cancer & Leukaemia In Children.) Everyone sleeps well after the Rally with or without a few beers and we were no different.
On Monday morning Steve had to get back for work but the rest of us had the half-baked idea of returning home via Snowdonia. I was told that Snowdon is very close to Church Stretton. Yes, right! So off to the land of our Chief Observer we boldly went. The land where all road signs are written in small letters to accommodate both English and Welsh alternatives. As they say in Welsh "Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn". Now apart from Nigel you're all wondering what that means aren't you?
The roads in North Wales were excellent for motorcycling and are to be highly recommended. Nice twisty roads winding through beautiful scenery and the weather was lovely. How we managed to get lost while looking for Snowdon I'm not quite sure but eventually we got to Llanberis which is a hub for activities in Snowdonia. The mountain railway runs from there.
We were expected home around 5pm but it turned out that we didn't leave Llanberis until gone 5pm. After a few hours of hard riding on some brilliant roads through glorious scenery we eventually saw a signpost for Church Stretton. We were back to where we started from that morning! After a few rest stops, we ended up getting home gone midnight. In total we had done 1100 miles in just over a couple of days. (Yes Nigel, I'm still riding.) I must admit to being a bit knackered at the end but I know we all thoroughly enjoyed it. You see the Rally has become an excuse for a boy's weekend away. I think at least one of us got it in the ear from the wife for getting home a tad late. Could that have been the bloke with the big red Yamaha? He would never admit to it.
"Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn" translates to "The red dragon will show the way".