Brechfa forest in West Wales was the location for the opening round of the 2019 British Championship All Terrain Rally Challenge, with Dylan Davies from Newcastle Emlyn the best placed local rider home in eighth place overall.
Dyfed Dirt Bike Club rapidly filled the 120 maximum entry of ‘bikes permitted for the off road event, with riders eager to contest one of the many popular events put on by the DDBC.
Day one got underway from Brynllewelin Farm on Llanllwni mountain, where the rain begin to come down and as the day went on the weather got worse and worse – not that it affected many of the riders who were tackling a 38 mile lap, which were to be ridden three times by most riders.
Day two saw bright sunshine greet the riders who had travelled from as far as Ireland and the Isle of Man to compete, although the course still had plenty of deep standing water about and wet weather riding gear was still needed.
The overall win would go to Jordan Corkill from the Isle of Man, whilst the runner-up was Lee Green from the Midlands. Another Manx rider Robert Quayle would take third overall.
The first Welsh rider to finish was Pepe Powell from Porth in the Rhondda finishing seventh, whilst the first local rider to finish would be Dylan Davies from Newcastle Emlyn in eighth place overall and third in the Rally Lite 1 class.
Cefin Evans, also from Newcastle Emlyn, finished 12th, Dylan Williams from near Aberaeron took 18th and Mark Wilson from Llandysul finished 19th. Anthony Davies from Whitland was classed as 22nd overall and Roger Hicks from Llanelli came home 24th overall. Aled Thomas from Carmarthen took 43rd after a hard 200 + miles of riding.
In the Beginners class, Ron Dowdswell from New Quay took the win, while Mike Forster from Dihewyd took the runners-up position and David Jones from Llandybie finished third. Shon Sarnau would take sixth and lady rider Mo Rapely from Horeb Brechfa finished a creditable seventh overall in class after a tough and enjoyable event.
As a local resident of the opening round in Gwernogle I am disgusted at the state of the road that has been left since this event has been held. It is now almost a week since it was held & despite having rain the only road to access our home is still muddy & quite frankly dangerous. If you are going to hold these events then you should clean up after yourselves. This is an unclassed country road that is not cleaned (or even salted in the bad winters) by any highways cleaning teams. It is slippery when it rains at best due to leaves etc. Don’t you care about how us locals have to use the road after you? There was enough fuss after the illegal rave here the other summer leaving the place in a state.
Granted it is good to have these sort of things happening here but please don’t leave our road in such a dangerous state after you have finished.