South West Peninsula Spring Rally Rally; April 2011
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View the 2011 South West Peninsula Rally in a Google map.
The South West Peninsula Rally was held Saturday 2nd April 2011 and I really enjoyed it. The weather was gorgeous for the time of year with Dorset, Devon and Somerset providing lovely scenery and enticing fast winding B roads. I especially liked the roads in North Devon. There were also some familiar roads which didn't disappoint. The organisers have introduced a Lands End award but it looked like it involved a lot of riding on the A30 so I gave that a miss and went for my preferred B roads. In fact, I never made it to Cornwall but then coming fom Plymouth there's the old Cornwall - Devon rivalry to consider. Anyway we've a nice run planned to Cornwall for the RBR and Grim's Cornish castle. I was able to give my old faithfull "Big One" a run as I went by myself. (The missus says its too uncomfortable for her so she'll only go on the Blackbird for longer trips.) As I've come to expect, it gave a good account of itself.
The original plan had been to meet up with Rob at the start but unfortunately a personal situation unexpectedly arose and he was unable to make it. I ended up going around on my own but then we didn't stay together long last year. He was so impressed with my SatNav skills he left me behind!
The ride went really smoothly with only a couple of problems. The first happened just after the start when I was on my way to Westonzoyland via the A372. As I was motoring along something shot out the hedge and hit me on the top of the boot and shin. It probably was a pheasant. It stung a bit and I got a nice bruise out of it. I didn't stop to see what happened to the pheasant. The second problem was that the road from the hotel at Cricket St Thomas had been closed. The clue was to count up how many gattle grids were on this road. A couple of locals helped me out by telling me there were 6. (If you think I have a yokel accent ...)
By my rough calculations I did just over 500 miles including the return trip from home to Bridgwater. So allowing for the fact it's about 75 miles to Bridgwater I did about 350 miles on the rally on Saturday. (A tad more than I had calculated using Google maps.) A bonus was that I also managed to pick up a couple of RBR landmarks. RBR12 at Lynmouth and RBR38 at Watchet.
The table below gives the estimated times based on Google directions, a five minute stop at normal controls and a twenty minute stop at manned controls. Unlike last year I can now use my Garmin 2610 and that together with the good weather meant that I finished an hour ahead of schedule and got back to Corfe Mullen before 9pm.