Welsh National Rally; May 2005
Gallery
A Night On the Floor Of the Aberystwyth TA Centre
My wife, Chris, decided that she would accompany me on the 2005 Welsh National rally. I was happy to have her come with me but I wasn't sure she understood what she was letting herself in for. I really enjoyed the 2004 rally but it did rain pretty much from start to finish. We had already decided that we wouldn't go through the night but this wasn't an issue as it turned out. The rally had been changed this year to a daytime only rally. Personally I think this is a good move. This year's Welsh rally started at 8.30am in Welshpool and you had to finish in Aberystwyth before midnight.
The platinum award for the 2005 rally meant going through 3 manned control points and 15 unmanned control points. An increase of 1 manned and 3 unmanned control points over last year's daytime rally. This made me think that it would be fairly challenging remembering what the 2004 rally was like. In addition, if you wanted to do the dragon award you also had to find 4 churches and castles along the way. Including the start and end points and the dragon points, this made 24 points to visit in total.
The rally was run on the 7th May. Two weeks in advance Clive, the organisers, sent through the final instructions with the control points. I got in touch with Rob in Warwick who I had gone around with in 2004 and, with him we planned our route. Rob and ourselves would meet at the start in Welshpool on Saturday 7th, 8.30am. At the start you're given the questions that can only be answered by visiting points, e.g. “what's the make of the burglar alarm on the Great Orme visitor centre?” The plan was to go north to get the platinum and dragon awards.
One of the dragon points was Stokesay Castle near Church Stretton on the A47. Now we were to pass that way when we travelled up from Poole on Friday 6th and we are ashamed to admit that we did try to cheat. We went to Stokesay Castle on the way up and tried to think what Clive would ask a question on. Would it be the what's on the name plate on the wooden bench? Would it be something about the flora and fauna written up on the National Trust poster? Would it be the first gravestone? We wrote down as much as we could including the name, date of birth and date of death on the first gravestone. Unfortunately, we didn't write down where the person came from which turned out to be the Stokesay question! So our attempt to cheat didn't do us any good. We ended up riding to Stokesay the next day.
We stayed at a reasonable B&B near Montgomery on Friday night and met up with Rob in Welshpool at the start next morning. There was the usual advice on the door, go south as the weather is better. Chris wanted to see Snowdonia so we were going north. As it turned out the weather was pretty good. A bit cold and windy with a few heavy showers but also a fair amount of blue sky. Without hanging about we got going, onto Stokesay Castle.
Things were going fairly well. Stokesay Castle, Montogomery, St. Dogfan's Church, Whittington, Chirk Castle and Llangollen were straightforward. We had good a break at the Ponderosa cafe, Horseshoe pass. You can see from the pictures that Chris was feeling a bit cold outside in the car park. We then went to St. Deinol's Church and onwards along the north Welsh cost to Mostyn, Abergele and the Great Orme at Llandudno. This section didn't go so well. The plan was to make the most of the A55 to make up some time but this didn't happen. We had to come off the A55 for Mostyn from there on we went through some torturous roads to Mostyn and Abergele. Lots of people were out on a Saturday afternoon and so were loads of tractors and diggers it seemed. We also had difficulty finding the object of the Mostyn question and went back and forth through Mostyn looking for it. After Abergele, we got back on the A55 for Llandudno. To get to the Great Orme we had to go through Llandudno on a very busy Saturday afternoon. We missed the direct route to the visitor centre, the object of the question, and ended up paying a quid to do a tour of the Great Orme behind painfully slow cars admiring the view before finally getting to the visitor centre. Our quick trip along the A55 turned out to be not so quick!
After the Great Orme, we went to Angelsey to visit a number of points. Angelsey was very nice after the busy north coast Welsh towns and roads, and we made up time. The only problem we had was a yahoo on a trailie out of control coming the other way around a bend on the wrong side of the road. While we rested in Moelfre we looked back across to where we had to go, Snowdonia, and in contrast to the blue skies of the Angelsey, the weather was looking very grim.
We left Anglesey and headed for Llanberis at the centre of Snowdonia. By this time the wind had blown away the bad weather we had seen from Angelsey and the blue skies were back. I've been through Snowdonia before but never with the visibility as good as it was that day. We passed through around 7pm to 8pm. The place was quiet and the scenery beautiful, including the impressive Snowdon. It was a great ride through Snowdonia.
After Snowdonia came the ride in to Aberystwyth through Porthmadog, Llanbedr, Dolgellau and Dinas Mawddwy. This was pleasant and uneventful, and we arrived at Aberystwyth TA centre around 10pm where Clive welcomed us with hot drinks and a meal, curry and chips in my case. Neither Rob nor ourselves had a place to stay that night, some convention going on in Aberystwyth, so we had the choice of kipping on the floor, riding to a Travel Inn some 70 miles away or riding home. Rob elected to ride home to Warwick getting home around 3am in the morning frozen to his handle bars he later told us. As for us, I introduced Chris to the post rally joy of kipping on the floor in your motorcycle gear. Some of the guys there could really snore, Chris reckons I was one, and Chris didn't get much rest as you'll see if you look closely at the picture. The next morning we were up bright and early and made our way home through the Brecons and across the Severn. We arrved home, Corfe Mullen, Wimborne, around late lunch.
Rob, Chris and I all got platinum and dragon awards. It was Chris' first time doing something like this and although I had my concerns beforehand, she had no problems. (Although the kip on the floor did take it's toll on her.) From Friday to Sunday we did 782 miles with around 400 miles of that on the rally. Once again Clive did a great job. The rally is very well organised and they put a lot of effort into making sure that the people who do it are well looked after. I also think their move to a daytime rally is a good move.