South West Peninsula Spring Rally Rally; April 2012
Petrol Shortage
View the 2012 South West Peninsula Spring Rally in a Google map.
There's no doubt that gorgeous weather helped to make the 2011 SWPSR very enjoyable and the way March 2012 was going it was looking like the 2012 SWPSR was going to have the same gorgeous weather. Sadly the freakishly amazingly good weather we had in March came to an end the day before the 2012 SWPSR was held on Saturday 31st March. The weather was good in that it stayed dry but it turned very cold.
Living in Dorset the SWPSR is very convenient and means that I can use my local knowledge to plan a route along some of my favourite Devon and Dorset roads. This year Rob (aka Grim) and I did the SWPSR together following the route shown. Not shown are other places of interest we stopped off at along the way. We didn't take in Cornwall which Rob coming from there would have liked. (I'm from Devon so it was good for me!) Owing to last minute issues with his high miles GS, he took his Triumph Bonneville which I have to admit did OK. I took my Varadero. (You can tell Rob admires the Varadero and I can see him swapping his GS for a Varadero as soon as he gets over the Ewan McGregor wannabee syndrome.)
The only real problem I had was the Government's abysmal mismanagement of the muted tanker driver's strike. Good old Francis Maude panicking everyone to fill up their jerry cans with petrol and store them at their house! He certainly panicked Dorset as every petrol station I stopped at on the way to Somerset was dry. Thankfully Somerset was not so easily panicked and petrol was no problem once I got there. The only other problem was that the SWPSR organisers had to change the start/finish venue when VJ Superbikes went out of business unexpectedly. That was a sizeable Honda franchise. A sign of the times I guess.
I'm pleased to report that this year Rob and I started and finished together. We took turns as lead. Inadvertently I had set my satnv to avoid major highways and this meant that Rob's Triumph did a fair bit of dirt tracking, especially in North Devon. (I did aplogise to him later.) It stayed dry which made for a lovely ride although it was a bit chilly going across Dartmoor's granite. Thanks to SAM for organising another very enjoyable rally. They throw in a T shirt and meal for the entry fee which isn't bad.