Welsh National Rally; May 2016
Please Can I Take a Break?
I rode up on Friday 6th May to the Shrewsbury Travelodge ready for the Welsh National Rally the next day. I had also booked in for Saturday night as that means I can leave my 'stuff' there while I'm doing the Rally. The previous weekend had been unseasonably cold with snow for some so I was happy to see that the weather for the Rally weekend was looking good. Much warmer with some sun but also the possibility of some thunder showers. As long as it was going to be warm and didn't rain incessantly I was fine with that. Steve White was staying at the Travelodge so I had company which was good particularly as he pointed out to me that the check in time for the Rally was a 30 minutes earlier this year at 8 am. (He had worked out I was staying at the Travelodge from the fresh coating of Hammerite on the crash bars of the Vara outside.) However, on Friday it didn't look like I would be enjoying Grim's company on the Rally this year as when I called him that morning he was at home taking care of his sick daughter and his broken GS. Steve was still betting he would turn up.
Turned out that Steve W was right. Arriving at Castle Caereinion we met up with Steve Smith and then who should turn up a few minutes later but Grim on his patched up GS (except for the ABS). Grim had planned to do a southerly route and I had planned on going north so after checking in the Steves, Grim and I wished each other luck and prepared to go our separate ways. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed not to be doing the Rally with Grim but on the positive side the thought of stopping for a few minutes to stretch the legs at each control was quite appealing. That thought lasted all of 2 minutes! It turned out that Grim had managed to make a rookie error and hadn't loaded his satnav with the waypoints for his route. There he was standing there looking all forlorn and broken. What else could I do but to invite him to tag along with me? To be fair to him, he had some applicable waypoints from the previous year still in his satnav and he does do most of the work of recording (by memory or photo) the answer for each control so it was very much a team effort.
Grim likes to make a good start and we made good time with the unmanned and dragon controls that got us to the first manned control at Abergele. We did have a bit of a problem with Llangedwyn with the satnavs taking us on a bit of circular route and the dragon at Bala was a bit of a trek to the railway station and back. I even managed to impress Grim by not stopping at Llangynod and instead opting to keep going and remember that there were butterflies stuck to the side of the pub. I think that's where it was?
Unfortunately after that it went a bit downhill for a while. I had decided to write down the control questions so that I could read them from my tank bag. I think it was at Pandy Tudur that this went a badly wrong when I wrote down the wrong question and was riding around for a while trying to answer the question for another control! Where's the bloody sign for Rosemary House? Grim was definitely not amused.
When we arrived at the second manned control at Dinas Dinlle Airport it started raining. We saw Steve W there and I was allowed time to stop and have a pasty, a snicker bar and a cup of tea. Luxury! Then came our rookie error, after doing the Nantille control we were both low on fuel, Grim to the extent that he didn't think he could make it to the next petrol station along our route some 19 miles off. To be fair it might have been a bit of a stretch for me as well. So we were forced to backtrack some 10 miles to the nearest petrol station to fill up and that cost us quite a bit of time. Doh, how long have we been doing this Rally?
After that things improved. The rain didn't last long and the sun came out. We met Steve S at Fairbourne where he risked parking his KTM next to my Vara. The ride through our remaining controls took us along some great roads with stunning scenery. As Grim remarked later on, it says something that after all the years we've been doing this Rally that we're still discovering brilliant roads. A few of the rides to the last controls were hard work as they involved riding 'farm' roads for most of the way but other than that we made good progress to the finish.
We arrived back at the finish around 6:15 pm which was AutoRoute's planned finish time so that was good. (For various reasons we had covered a fair bit more than the planned route's 293 miles.) Unfortunately for those yet to finish the Heavens opened up just after we finished with thunderstorms, heavy rain and hail. We got lucky. We met with Steve S who had already finished, checked back in and did the special test. The special test involved successfully landing a model plane held up by a bit of rope. My 25 hours training on a Piper Warrior didn't help and I scored a big fat 0. Grim on the other hand did quite well and scored 25! (I did win a Metzler hat in the draw.) After that we took some time over our curry dinners and met with Steve W who told us that his Rally had not been without incident but that's for him to tell. Happily I managed to keep the Vara sunnyside up (which wasn't the case on my last rally as Steve S will tell you). Everyone seemed to have a good time on the Rally and we certainly did. A big thanks to Clive for a job well done.