Welsh National Rally; May 2011
The Satnav Helped but it was stiil Dark at the Finish
View the 2011 Welsh National Rally in a Google map. Four RBR landmarks that were also visited are not shown on the route.
The plan for this year's Welsh National Rally (WNR) is shown. As we normally do, we planned a Platinum and Dragon route taking in 15 unmanned controls, 3 manned controls and 4 dragon controls. For this year we also planned to take in 4 of the Round Britain Rally landmarks (75, 76, 78 and 82) and one of the Grim Rider's castles (Castell Dolbadarn). The confidence a Sat Nav gives you! The additional landmarks and the castle were along the WNR route (or so we thought). The route was worked out using Google with 20 minute stops at the 3 manned controls and 5 minute stops at all other controls and landmarks. This normally gives us the worst case times and we normally end up finishing a bit earlier.
Our route went anticlockwise from the start with the half way point being the last of the 3 manned controls at Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll, Anglesey. This year it wasn't a problem getting to the last manned control before they close at 6pm.
We got off to an early start, unfortunately too early for our mate Rob who with his new responsibilities (twins) didn't get to Castle Caerienion in time to start with us. We started in the dry but by the time we got to the first manned control at Frongoch it had started to rain. It then rained fairly heavily until we got to our half way point on Anglesey. On the way there we had to give up on RBR75 but we did get some photos of Grim's castle. Good luck to Wills and Kate, RAF Valley sticking out in the Irish Sea was very wet and windy.
We hadn't really had a rest until we got to the last manned controlon Anglesey. The Penrhos Arms was by far the best manned control. The landlord was very welcoming and we had a good rest break there. He had spent 10 years on Fraggle Rock (Portland) so he and Chris had a good natter. After that the sun came out as we wound our way around to Carnarvon, Porthmadog and down the coast past Barmouth and Aberystwyth. Lake Cregannan was a beautiful spot.
After Aberystwyth, we headed east to pick up the last four unmanned controls on the way to the finish. We managed to get them in the daylight apart from the last, Llanwyddelan, where we ended up poking around in the dark looking for a church gate to count the white crosses on it. We got to the finish at around 10pm so that was over an hour earlier than we planned. We were happy with that given the amount of time we had wasted trying to find RBR75. We got the other 3 RBRs and Grim's castle. We also finished with a platinum and dragon and enjoyed a good ride. We missed out on the curry again but the ladies cooked us up a big fry up and chips to make up for it. They told us that they have recognised that those doing the shorter rides get the curry so next year they're going to keep some back.
This was my eighth WNR and Chris'seventh. We still enioy it and next year is the 20th so we'll have to be there for that. The Blackbird went like good one and the Sat Nav was once again a great help. A big thanks to Clive Mid Wales MCC.