The Beacons Rally : Round 3 of the UK Rally series on a KTM950

Lyndon Poskitt reports from his third round of the UK rally championship :

The Beacons Rally is in South Wales and with no offers of a lift I would have to ride to this one. With all the inconvenience and stress of the flat tyre on the Kielder I decided to fit mousses, especially for the sharp rocks in South Wales. I didn’t really want to ride three hours to the event on mousses and fresh rubber so I loaded the bike with all my camping gear, tyres and mousses and set off to the event and changed the tyres / mousses when I got there. It’s days like today that you smile even though you are riding your bike in the pouring rain. When the traffic on the M6 South is chocka block and I found myself riding past stationary traffic for about an hour….ridiculous. I was really happy not to be in a car or van.

So as I wrestled with the tyres and mousses in the rain at the camp site in the pouring rain, I was wishing I’d done it the night before. Thankfully, the offer of a gazebo and a tyre changing frame was well received (cheers DibDob).

Lying in the tent listening to the rain, it was not showing any signs of letting up. I got up on Saturday morning and prepared for the ride to the start line. I was drenched by the time I got there and it didn’t let up, the rain was set in. I think we were set for a repeat of Ryedale. On the front row this time, one thing was for sure, I would not get stuck behind slower riders today.

The first lap was just a sighting lap with no specials so a good opportunity to test how fast you can go while trying to learn the special too. The specials were really good with a perfect mixture of every terrain and plenty of opportunities to see triple digits on the speed meter.

The second special was really tricky in that is had a badly rutted section that went on forever and was relentless. There was no way of getting up onto the pegs or finding an easy route but all I knew was that I needed to stay clear of the deep ruts, I learnt that lesson the hard way at the Ryedale. I adopted an approach that saw me traversing the ruts and it seemed to work pretty well but when I finally got out of the rut section I was finished, exhausted. I knew the other big bikes would find it extremely challenging so I was pleased to be through it and I was armed with my strategy for the first timed lap.

Both timed laps went really well, no mishaps or mistakes, I managed to stay on the throttle for pretty much all of it and most importantly I hit every braking point and the times showed it. Unfortunately the single cylinder bikes were much quicker through the rutted special so I found myself in 3rd overall overnight with Steve Hague and Craig Bounds in front of me. Hearing that the organisers had put a work around the rutted section for Sunday due to the amount of victims it had claimed, I knew it would be a good day for the big bike.

Day two saw the full course reversed which totally changed the terrain and the challenge too, including some pretty tricky climbs. In addition though the weather was much kinder too.

With mousses in the tyres I gave it everything on Sunday to see if I could top the tables but I just could not catch Craig’s times, even with his injured shoulder. That said, I was close to Craig all day, with just seconds between us I looked for that little extra. I could not have asked for a better result overall, I took second behind Craig but with just 26 second the gap, the smallest it’s been so far. This was a great result for the old 950 Adventure, topping the twin cylinder class by over two minutes.

The ride home was slow, 200 miles at 60mph so as to not melt my mousses. A 600 miles weekend through wind, rain and mud and when I finally arrived home, there was no surprise that all I was interested in was the bath.

I was sad to see Mark Mollineux pull out of the event with a back injury; Mark is one of the friendliest competitors out there and would do anything for anyone. Heal quickly Mark, hope to see you at the Hafren.