Deepest, Brightest Wales

 Once again, the annual SKCC Rogue Runners trip to Wales came around, at an unfortunate time with the death of Queen Elizabeth the week before and her funeral due on the last day of our trip.

However, the weather was looking very good (amazingly, the forecasters were right) and I left work on Thursday evening to head for the hotel in Newport, thus avoiding the 4am start of previous trips. I had a smooth run there, arriving just in time for the coffee part of the meal.

Present on the trip, as well as me obviously, were:

David, Graham, Guy - Lotus Elise
Tony - Stylus
Linda - Tiger
Duncan and Alison, Brian - Caterham
Ken - MX5

Day 1 - Newport to Mold, 240 miles

The day didn't start great - felt like the Brecons was shut with the number of closed roads and roadworks being done. However, an early run up the Black Mountain road more than made up for it. We stopped at the car park at the top and, amazingly, they have re-surfaced it:

As it was empty as I left, I also took the oppurtunity to add some black rings to the new surface - tee hee.

The rest of the way up to Mold was uneventful, with some great roads, minimal traffic, sunshine and lots of sheep. The Beaufort Park Hotel was in need of modernisation but perfectly adequate, with reasonable food and we had a couple of drinks to round off the evening. 

This year, I was sharing a room with Guy - poor guy (see what I did there?). I think he managed a few hours of sleep in between my snoring.

Day 2 - Mold Circle, 220 miles

Today was a circular route through North Wales and Snowdonia, with a beautiful stop above a small lake at one point:

We were joined here by a lovely-sounding Mclaren and a couple of very shiny BMW X3Msv - would have been nice to had a play down the roads but we were just leaving as they arrived.

Shortly after, a stop at the Ffestiniog railway cafe for coffee, cake and steam engines:

Great roads continued, although I somehow managed to completely miss Harlech Castle as we drove near it - not sure how I managed that but led to much mirth and many comments for the rest of the trip.

Carried on down to Barmouth and then back to Mold via the Conway Falls Cafe, a regular stop.

Day 3 - Mold to Paincastle, 220 miles

Stupidly, I was invited to lead the group from the hotel which went well - for 20 metres. As I have the only non-TomTom satnav, my satnav told me to turn right out of the hotel. Poor unsuspecting Dave followed me while everyone else turned left. My pathfinder job was over in 10 seconds.

My satnav then took us into a new housing estate that wasn't on my map, at which point Dave roared off, wondering why he had followed me. However, my new route was actually very good and I found a great road that eventually brought me back to the others about an hour later.

On the way to Lake Vrnwy (how the heck is that pronounced?), Guy stopped and took some action shots, getting a good one of me:

At the Lake itself, we got embroiled in a half-marathon which forced us to wait at the dam for 30 minutes. Not a great hardship, as they had a great cafe with some very nice ice-cream:

 

Yet another awesome run down the Elan Valley was followed by our regular stop at the Two Hoots Cafe in Devils Bridge, which was delayed by a change to their layout, with a new car park that confused us a little (we aren't too bright). But another day, another steam engine:

The rest of the day was an enjoyable thrash to the Roast Ox pub and hotel in Paincastle. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, it was a really pretty beamed pub with excellent food and the best rooms of our trip:

Day 4 - Paincastle to Merthyr, 143 miles

As this was the Queen's funeral day, a few of us stayed at the pub to watch, planning a short route to the next hotel after lunch. The rest of us set off on what I thought was a slightly shortened route but, it turned out, half of us had decided to revert to the original longer route (which I did not have the satnav route for). 

After a 3-point turn, 3 of us set off, having a great thrash to Lake Brianne for the 11am funeral time, where we stopped to listen to the service on LW radio:

It was a surprisingly emotional place to be, silent and scenic, with just occasional birdsong to break the ambience- very fitting, I thought.

The last stint of the day was AWESOME - the Black Mountain road. On the way up, we got stuck behind a biker who absolutely refused to move over for us until I finally got a short straight to overtake on. This was just before a wonderful alpine-style hairpin bend which I took a bit sideways, leaving the scent of burning rubber in the air. I then thrashed up a few corners to the car park, to the interest of several yoofs parked there in a selection of Clio's and Abarth's. The biker trundled past and his passenger gave me the finger - fair enough, I probably did scare the crap out of them.

Guy and I then descended the road at a frankly scary (to me, anyway) speed - there were a couple of corners where I honestly thought I might have overdone it but Zedster got me round - damn, it was one of my best runs ever. 

And so Guy and I decided to do it again, him leading this time. I tried to keep up with him but he slowly edged ahead of me. If anything, this run was even better - nothing in front of us and only physics holding us back. Considering Zedster's lack of ABS or traction control compared to Guy's Elise, we did pretty well. 

On the hairpin, I was even more sideways this time, with an admiring group of bikers cheering me on (one disadvantage of the mid-engined Elise is the lack of oversteer) and the two of us roared past the car park, with the yoofs, probably attracted by my antics on the hairpin, standing on the wall to watch. The final run down was just as mental as the first. Yes, it was very childish and possibly dangerous but sometimes, you just need to.

The final hotel of the trip was in Merthyr Tydfill, one of the ugliest towns in the UK (sorry to any residents reading this - I'm sure there are some good bits but we sure didn't see them). The hotel was surprisingly interesting - an eclectic mix of styles as if they had gone through several architects during planning and a cook who really hated brussell sprouts and boiled them almost to a soup. By far the cheapest hotel, the food was OK and I slept well, despite being in very close contact to the bed springs.

Day 5 - Home, 200 miles

A melancholy meander through the Forest of Dean and the Cotswolds, with various Rogue's splitting off at different points to head for their homes. A last hoorah of B-roads before the drudge of the M4 and home by 2pm.

Epilogue

Of the 3 other Wales trips I have done, this one had the best weather and possibly the least traffic (apart from the first few hours from Newport on day 1). Also, there seemed to have been a lot of freshly tarmac'd roads which also improved the quality of our blasts.

Zedster continues to improve with age, not missing a beat in 1100 miles of high-revving debauchery.

As always, the company was a major highlight; it's great to know so many people who have such similar interests that conversation is never a chore:

Obviously, they could improve; while I was concentrating on the road, they were all staring at some bloody great castle!

Diolch i chi gyd a welai chi flwyddyn nesaf!!

Luckily, Guy did have his cameras running on that amazing Black Mountain run. The first one includes my first attempt at the hairpin - bit of tyre squeal but it felt much more impressive than it looks:

This is the more edited version:

Walton Meet

 I finally managed to make a trip to the Walton-on-Thames meet that occurs every 2 or 3 months. Lovely sunny day and took my brother for his first drive in my car and an enjoyable meet with a reasonable range of cars:

Steam-powered 1910 classic (a Taylor or something like that) - sounded exactly like a steam engine, weird! 

I always though an RS200 was quite rare but there were 3 of them here. 

A nice cafe and right on the river, so a pretty location. 

Another milestone, the first time someone else has driven Zedster - terrifying! My brother drove for a few miles and it was horrible; I'm just a useless passenger and I kept grabbing the steering wheel every time he vaguely headed towards the pavement and panicking when he went over 30mph.

We made it back in one piece, though, so all good and all ready for the SKCC Wales trip on Thursday evening. 

My kingdom for a bulb

 Zedster went in for an MOT today and failed because of a broken number plate bulb! I mean, Jees, really? He also failed it for the headlight aim being too high (it was the same last year but he let me off as it was the only issue).

A quick trawl through my spare parts bin and I found a couple of LED pads I got as part of a £3 eBay purchase. Wired those in and now my number plate light is brighter than my main units! Well, almost...

Fifteen minutes with a spanner and I've lowered the front headlight units angle. Retest booked for tomorrow and I'll take the spanner so I can adjust them again on the spot, if needed. 

But an amazing discovery on my first drive post-gearshift fix; the gear lever has hardly any vibration in it. The new rubber washers are working amazingly - I just hope they don't fall apart in a few weeks... If they don't, I'm tempted to tell GBS to update their build advice when fitting the quickshift to use rubber washers - could save others having the same problem. 

Back in gear

 So time to repair the quickshift. I ordered some steel tube to go inside the existing tube, brought out the Dremel and drilled some holes to prepare the shift for welding:

Took it to Matt who took about 30 minutes to produce this:

More Dremel grinding tidied it up, then primer and paint to make it more presentable (not that it matters as its out of sight) :

After many discussions, I decide to try and rubber mount the whole thing, to prevent cracking again in future. I've thus fitted rubber washers like this:

Look good but Holy Sweatballs, they were an utter pig to fit. First, I had to cut down 2 sets of washers because there was not enough space for them to fit against the MT75 gearbox. Then, it took skills that Cirque de Soleil would have been proud of to get the damn things in - trying to get my chunky arms in the small gap between tunnel panels so that I could hold the rear washer in place while pushing the bolt through - it took me about 2 hours of sweating, swearing and having my arms cut to ribbons by the cable ties holding the brake lines. 

Annoyingly, it really all needs to come out again. I knew that adding the washers would move the gear lever back, so I tried to adjust it by the width of the washers but, unsurprisingly, it didn't work and the lever wouldn't slot into my gate, as before. I was just too exhausted to take it all out again just to realign it, so I'm back to my gearshift gaiter for now. 

I've not even had chance to go out and check it works - I've had a horrible flu for the last few days and I've booked an MOT for tomorrow - hopefully, I'll feel up to it.