WELSH BORDERS RUN SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2002
By 11 o’clock in the morning the roar of a dozen Mk1
engines was reverberating around Oswestry’s Asda car park, intimidating morning
shoppers and threatening the very fabric of the local community. Oh alright,
actually by 11 o’clock in the morning we were the only ones there – there was
brief (misplaced) hope when a MK3 pulled up but he was only doing his shopping.
Apparently there hadn’t been too much interest in the run so it had been
cancelled – we’d only showed up after a last minute decision ourselves.
So no MK1 club, but we had Richard Morgan’s route plan, a sunny day and a
T-bar, so we went anyway.
The route took us out of Oswestry and down the A483. This is over wide single
and dual carriage way and so is a nice fast start. Off onto the A495 and then
onto the B4396 gives plenty of fast driving with swooping bends and not a lot of
traffic – this is probably the best part of this route for entertaining driving.
The next part of the route involved going down narrower and narrower single
track roads following Richard’s directions towards Lake Vyrnwy – maybe Richard
could put the route back on the Website as I was too busy concentrating on
driving to know where we were! The approach to the lake was up heavily wooded
hillside on very narrow roads followed by a quick drop down towards the lake on
the other side of the hill.
The lake itself has a viaduct which can be driven over to find the car parks
and picnic areas. Even on such a sunny day the place wasn’t crowded and had good
facilities. After lunch we were off again, driving round the lakeside to the far
end where we started upwards going towards Lake Tegid and Bala. This is a real
middle of nowhere road, single track with added sheep to avoid. There is also a
nice long stretch with no barriers and steep drops, which tends to focus the
mind a little!
Next was a brief stop at Bala to watch the windsurfers on the lake followed
by what I hoped would be a fast run to Corwen on the B4401. Unfortunately,
traffic stopped us enjoying what is quite a fast curvy B road. Final route home
was onto the A5 through Llangollen (always a varied but usually slow drive) and
then a faster drive down back to Oswestry.
All in all the route is very varied with high speed driving on dual carriage
ways and twisty A and B roads, plus interesting single track sheep avoidance
routes up into the low hills, with great countryside, forests and lakes all
included. I hope that the club gets more interest next year because on a sunny
day you’d be hard pressed to find a better drive out into the country.
MARK DALTON
