doing the Hafren Rally on an HP2. Bloody good fun! <
> And well done for a well earned second placed multi.

Thanks mate. Only sorry that your Rogue Elefant ate its clutch so early on, along with Pat Keenan's on his 950. I was looking forward to the competition on Lap 2. Pat was going like a demon on the sighting lap, the nutter!
What happened to Noel Fletcher and his very fast R100GS special? I saw him pushing it on the sighting lap.

>What happened to Jonty on the other HP2, had to go home for his Sunday tea?
NO, he ripped the valve out of his inner tube - I caught up with him on the fire road at the end of SS2 and he made it back to base taking short cuts.
Why was bike with tubeless rims running tubes? Good question.....
I actually suggested running tubeless, but Si Pavey was worried about losing air if the rims got dented. Mousses would have been the ideal, but he
thought tubes with rim-locks would be better than tubeless. In the event, the rim-locks didn't have a good enough grip on the tyre so it spun.
>
>Mind you, I see the only special he was timed on he managed to do 30 seconds faster than the next fastest bike (Derek Edmondson at that).

Isn't that just mind-blowing??!! I wish someone had been filming him in the special sections! Even I had the speedo nudging 90mph at one point on the course, I hate to think how quickly Jonty must have been going!
>
> That Phil Gunn though, he can make that R80 GS fly.
He can indeed. I rode quite a lot with Phil - in fact I arrived at the bottom of that first snotty hill just in time to see him spin the bike round and topple over as he tried to pass a stuck rider. Apparently he hurt his wrist in the process. All I can say is that it didn't slow him down much!
I really don't think they should have had that hill in the event with those conditions. Richard Ireland only got half way up and had to turn round and
take the fire roads which they put us through on lap 2.
>
FWIW (and giving a bit of positive spin to my results......)

I was:
Best finisher of all the bikes over 800cc
Runner Up (to Phil G) in the Multi-cylinder class (only 3 finished!)
14th Trailbike out of 36 Trailbike finishers
161st overall, out of 255 finishers and over 300 starters.

(The vast majority of the field were on single cylinder, lighweight enduro bikes of 200-450cc, most of them orange)

And in the excuses department,
1/ I got stuck twice in the first special stage (SS1) in a deep rut, which
cost me a good 20 secs of pushing and heaving off the bike.
2/ I rode most of the second lap with no rear brake because the brake snake was stopping the brake lever from travelling as far as it needed to work the brake as the rear pads were worn down by the grinding paste muck.
(The front brake lever clamp also worked loose, which fortunately Phil G noticed just before I started SS3, so I got it tightened up with the Torx
tool that the BMW folk lent me.)
3/ I dropped the bloody thing in a deep gully coming off the motocross track in SS3, costing me a good 30 seconds while I heaved the damn thing
back onto its wheels....and for the last mile up on the mountain I was really struggling to see where I was going through mud-spattered goggles.
4/ I am a fat old man with a very strong sense of self-preservation who didn¹t even start riding off road until I was 24

I¹m also confident I would have finished higher up if there¹d been a 3rd lap! I was pumped for more at the end of Lap Two!
(They shortened it to 2 x 45 mile laps because so many people were stranded in the forest with broken bikes)

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole event (despite the weather!) and only wish I could have done another lap!
And finally, you can't beat telescopic forks for hitting big bumps at speed......The HP2's Marzocchis beat the standard R1200GS's telelever hands
down.
PNB
PS Richard Ireland used 2 litres of oil during the event, but finished 220th just one second ahead of TBM's Mel on a Husky 250! Undaunted, Richard
climbed back on his muddy beast and headed for Holyhead to catch the ferry, but apparently he didn't quite make it.....His 1150 Adventure has done
98,000 miles now though!