Welsh National Rally; May 2010
I Wish I Could Work my Satnav
View the 2010 Welsh National Rally in a Google map.
Yes we're still doing the Welsh National Rally and still enjoying it. The Rally was held 8th May this year and this was our 7th go at it. One change for this year, was that after many years of not using one, we took a sat nav along. It wasn't the first time I've used a sat nav as I had used my TomTom One V3 with plastic bags to tour Scotland in September 2009. With a Ram mount, a Telferizer and a 12V car cigarrette lighter socket the TomTom worked a treat for the 3000 mile trip. Now the TomTom was fine (much more user friendly than the Garmin) but it was a bit of a pain with the plastic bags (which were needed frequently in Scotland to keep the rain off). On principle I wasn't going to pay big money (400 to 500 pounds) for a new Garmin Zumo so I consulted my old mate the Grim Rider. On his advice I puchased a second hand Garmin 2610 sat nav from Ebay for the princely sum of 70 pounds. He swears by them. I then bought a Ram mount and a power lead to fit the Garmin to the bike for another 40 pounds. With a bit of help from Grim I was all set to use the 2610.
My first use of the 2610 was on the 2010 South West Rally in March 2010 and it was a disaster. After mastering Garmin MapSource on my PC (written by engineers for engineers, not for your average user) I entered my SW Rally waypoints and a circular route starting and finishing at Bridgwater. I then downloaded the waypoints and the route to the 2610. Boy was I confident that the rally was going to be a doddle using my 2610. What could go wrong? I started the SW Rally proudly leading the way (the wrong way as it turned out) for my mates Grim and Dave. I soon ran into a few problems:
- The first was that with a circular route I couldn't literally tell whether I was coming or going.
- The second was that I had set calculate short route on the 2610 and this had taken us down single lane tracks covered with Exmoor mud and gravel.
- The third was that I blindly followed what the 2610 was telling me ignoring the directions on road signs.
Anyway to cut the story short, Grim and Dave, with good cause, had no confidence in my lead. Grim broke off for the first control point and we went our separate ways. Dave and I managed to finish together but we didn't always manage to stay together throughout the SW Rally.
Back to the Welsh National Rally. Keen to learn lessons from the SW Rally experience:
- I would reinstate preparing laminated notes on our planned route to go in my tank map holder. I resolved not to blindly do what the 2610 told me to do. I would use my route notes together with road signs to override the 2610 if needed.
- I only planned and downloaded way points corresponding to the control points of the route from MapSource to the 2610, After reaching a control point point I would then put the next control point along the route in the 2610 rather than put the entire route in the 2610.
- I would stop telling the 2610 to take the short route and instead tell it to take the fastest route. (The Blackbird is very good but not for green laning.)
We're glad to report that it worked. We finished the Rally around 7.45 pm in daylight which is our earliest finish. We also only did around 25 miles more than planned at around 360 miles. (We usually end up doing substantially more than planned.) Even so, I almost missed Clive's curry at the end of the Rally. Chris could have had the last of the curry but in the true spirit of self-sacrifice I've come to expect of her she let me have it instead! The plan below is based on what Google maps calculates and it had us arriving at just after 10 pm. We did have long stops at Llandovery and Abergavenny but, where possible, Chris stayed on the bike at control points to record the answer so this saved a bit of time.
The weather for the Rally didn't turn out to be too good. It was very cold for May (10 degrees centigrade maximum, I had my thermals on) and there was a fair bit of rain. Going over the Brecons from Abergavenny to Blaenavon was a bit grim. (Because we were ahead of time we switched the order of these two control points from that shown below.) As anyone who has ridden that road will know it's a bit exposed and with the cold, rain and wind it was 'right bracing'. A bit of a moan about the Rally this year was that in having 4 manned control points in the south and only 2 in the north meant that there was a heavy mileage penalty if you went north. This meant that most went south which is a bit of a shame as for once the weather turned out to be drier in the north. However, despite the weather we thoroughly enjoyed the Rally. The Blackbird went well and it was a good ride on good roads. We ended up with our usual Dragon + Platinum award.
We made a long weekend of the Rally. We left Friday morning and returned home Monday afternoon. Apart from Saturday when the Rally was run, the weather had been pretty good. Dry with some sun but also cold. On the way up on Fiday we did some RBR landmarks. In the evening we met up with Rob at the B&B at Newtown we were all booked into for the night. The B&B was nothing special but it was easy to walk into town for a meal and it was close to the Rally start at Castle Caereinion. We had a good meal at the Chinese restaurant in Newtown. Very enjoyable evening.
On Saturday morning we woke up to the rain and set off for the Rally start. We parted company with Rob at the start of the Rally. We heard from him later that he had changed his mind about doing a Dragon + Platinum and switched to doing the sat nav challenge at the last moment. (He had a difficult day.) The rain continued on and off for the rest of the day. The bike went very well (the new rear shock made a difference), we mostly kept to our plan and we made very good time. We rested at the manned control points, a short stop at Aberaeron, lunch at Llandovery castle and a long rest stop at Abergavenny. We didn't get lost once (amazing) although the 2610 did take us the long way around on one hop near the end. I was a bit tired and let it have its way. (This was the main reason for doing more miles than planned.) After getting to the finish around 7.45 pm I had to take the special test which consisted of throwing big rubber darts into plastic bins at various distances. You were allowed one practice throw and three throws that scored. That was a shame as my first practice throw flukely bounced off the floor into the highest scoring bin. The adjudicating lady was very strict and refused to count it. After a mild strop I accepted her decision. (Am I getting as competitive as Grim?) After a meal and a good natter with Paul Belcher we made our way to the Premier Inn at Oswestry arriving around 10 pm.
Our plan for Sunday was to do the North Wales RBR landmarks to make up for the fact that we had had to go south on the Rally. It was a very pleasant day as the pictures below show. After picking up a couple of RBR landmarks, Wrexham and Flintshire, we had breakfast at the Ponderosa. We then made our way up the A5 to Anglesely picking up RBR landmarks along the way. I snapped Llynnau Mymbyr on the way back to the Oswestry Premier Inn where we stayed a second night on Sunday. It was very comfortable which was good after the awful one we stayed at in Bodmin earlier this year. (Grim, that's Cornwall for you.)
On Monday we made our way back home picking up some more RBR landmarks in the Midlands. The 2610 made finding landmarks in urban areas so much easier. (Don't let anyone tell you that using a sat nav isn't an advantage.) We did a total of 1080 miles over our long weekend.