May 11th & 12th. The Welsh Rally.

Saturday morning 4am and my bloody alarm goes off! What have I done to deserve this? Agreeing to co-pilot Darren Sharp on the Club Triumph Welsh rally that’s what. It seemed a good idea at the time!

I got my things together and headed down to Hornchurch to meet Darren. His alarm not going off was the reason for him greeting me at the front door in his underpants and t-shirt. Nice! (Not!)

After a quick cup of coffee we set off for the start location at Ross on Wye services to meet other Triumph peoples for the start of the event. Our chariot for this rally was Darren’s beautiful Mk2 saloon. As usual there were quite a number of different models taking part in this which added to the variety.

In no time at all the 10am start was on us and we were away. We started by travelling westwards towards Merthyr Tydfil before heading up to the Brecon Beacons. After that we took the B4520 up to Lower and Upper Chapel and then further north up to Garth. The next road was over a beautiful mountain pass that had some stunning scenery and views





Tregaron was the next main town we ventured through, but after this it was back across the mountains and over to Elan Valley. Again more breath taking views were taken in and this point both of us admitted that we never realised that Wales was so beautiful.

The next part of the drive was taken by Darren and I have to confess to sleeping like the dead between Llangurig and Aberystwyth waking only briefly to the sound of the torrential hail stones that had the entire ‘soft top’ brigade stopping hurriedly to put their roofs up. (Except Martin Randle and Dina who just carried on regardless!)  

After a very good night in Aberystwyth we set out for the first stop of the day at the Devils Bridge waterfalls. We did the short tour to look around and very beautiful it was too.





 It had started to rain now which was great pity as the previous day had been pretty good. After Devils bridge we took the mountain pass over Nant y Moch reservoir and out to Tal y Bont.

Machynileth was the next town and then the coast road to Twywn. After this we took the B4405 straight across the middle of Snowdonia national park before heading back down to Penegoes, over another mountain pass to Llanidloes and then our final destination at Newtown in Powys.  

By now it was 2.15pm and we didn’t hang around too long at the finish as were driving home again that night and still had over 200 miles to do. We left around 2.45pm and got back to Darren’s at about 7pm. (Bloody Sunday night M1 traffic!)

It had been a great weekend and Darren’s car hadn’t missed a beat. We had decided to take his one and a bit of a shakedown before we do the ten countries run in it in September. If this run was anything to go by, we shouldn’t have too much to worry about.

 

Some pics from the weekend.