Posted: 25 May 2010 at 5:34pm | IP Logged

Brit Butt Rally 2010 – A tale of extreme emotions and walking boulders!

So what is the Brit Butt Rally….well basically its labelled as one of the toughest rally’s in the world, second only to the famous Iron Butt Rally held in the US, and is ran in the UK over 36 hours.

This year the finisher’s criteria for the BBR were to gain a minimum of 27,000 points and to have ridden at least 1206 miles.

So how did it all start for me…..well registration for the BBR had to be completed online via www.britbuttrally.com and I’m proud to say I was the very first to register, just 4 seconds after registration opened !

From October I then had to wait until the draw for the contestants took place on Christmas Eve.

At 4:53pm on the 24^th December I received an email from Bosshog…….

CONGRATULATIONS  !!

Your name has been drawn for the 2010 Brit Butt Rally.

You are one of only fifty five riders who will be competing in the Rest of the World’s Toughest Rally.

Bloody hell, that was the best Christmas present ever!

So my weapon of choice for the BBR ended up being a 1997 R1100GS

The list of farkles on my bike can be found here…

http://www.ironbutt.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4691&P N=2

The auxiliary fuel tank was only finished on Thursday evening, talk about cutting things fine!

So with the bike all prepared I headed off to the Cheshunt Marriott Hotel near the  A10/M25 junction, north of London  on Friday, leaving Derby at 11am and arriving at the rally HQ at 12:30pm.

As a virgin rally rider, I was a bit apprehensive, and felt a bit out of my depth when chatting to other veterans of the BBR, but I was soon settled in and having a joke with some friends, and making new ones. The first person I started chatting with was Margaret Peart, an Iron Butt Rally veteran and currently in the process of doing a RTW trip – much respect to Margaret, someone who I only hope to emulate in my retirement!

After getting my registration form sorted out it was then a case of getting Rick, the BBR Technical Inspector to check over my bike and sign off the registration form. After checking out that my driving licence was valid, along with a MoT, insurance and V5, Rick then proceeded to measure the depth of my tyre tread, checked all the lights and horns worked okay and then tried to pull the auxiliary fuel tank off the bike…fortunately something he couldn’t do !. After I’d confirmed the main tank held 24 litres and the auxiliary fuel tank held 17.5 litres Rick was then happy to sign off my registration form and I was then ready to do the odometer ride.

At this point Margaret came over and asked if she could buddy up with me to do the odometer ride together – talk about nerves! Here was a lady who had finished the 2009 Iron Butt Rally and she wanted my help!! If I cocked up the odometer ride, then both of us would have to do the odo ride again, so no pressure on me then.

Fortunately we completed the ride satisfactorily, unlike a fair few others!

So after the odometer ride we were then left to own devices until the evening dinner and the presentation of the 2010 Brit Butt Rally books. I took advantage of this time to set up “office” in the bedroom – getting the notebook fired up, opening up MapSource, GPSU and AutoRoute, pinning up my wall map of the UK and then time to retire to the bar and have a couple of drinks before the drinking curfew kicked in a 6pm, as no alcohol was allowed to be consumed 12 hours before the start of the rally.

At 7pm we all went though to the banquet hall for a buffet meal of pasta, pasta and more pasta, and like in Oliver Twist “Can I have some more please, sir?” There was more than enough food for us all. At my table, I had Rob (two times winner of the BBR) on my left hand side and on my right hand side was Margaret – talk about being surrounded by probably the two most experienced riders currently in the UK!

At 8:30pm Roger opened the rally by welcoming us all and announcing all the riders and their rally numbers and warned us of the perils of dehydration and reminding us that the rally is for fun and is not worth dying for – the last thing he wanted to do was to call our next of kin with bad news. After handing over to Pete West, the Rally Master, Pete called us all up to receive a large white envelop, containing the 2010 BBR Rally book and our rally flag…..I was number four.

When everyone had received their packs, Pete gave us the instruction to open the envelopes. A quick glance though showed there to be 67 bonuses, scattered though England, Scotland and Wales, plus one on the Isle of Wight, which would require a ferry crossing – which I immediately ruled out as I didn’t want to be at the mercy of ferry.

As it turned out you would loose approximately 3 hours on the crossings – something that Paddy found out and also Joe had the added problem of the ferry breaking down, leaving him stranded on the island!

Whilst Pete was telling us about the rally book and a couple of corrections we needed to make, I made a start of writing my codes for each bonus in the rally book – which I would then use to create my waypoints in MapSource. The code is quite simple – the first 4 digits are the value of the bonus, the second two digits at the bonus number and the third set of alpha numeric’s are the availability timescale of the bonus, 24, Day, Night, Restricted Times…..

i.e. 2999-04-24, or 0659-54-D etc

And this next picture shows how I used the “temperature” feature of the waypoint to allocate the bonus number.

By using the sort function on the coded bonus, it’s possible to sort the entire bonuses by value and by using the category function, you can filter the bonuses down to just those that are available 24 hours etc.

Once all the bonus’s had been loaded in to MapSource, I then used GPSU to upload the data into AutoRoute, which I then used for planning the route. Basically I took all the high value bonus’s, and worked a route out around them, adding 10 minutes to each stop. I didn’t factor in fuel stops, as with an auxiliary fuel tank I could just stop at any petrol station that was along the route. I then looked at where I’d be at around 11pm so that I could schedule a 3 hour stop for the sleep bonus and then added any other bonus’s that were near the route until AutoRoute told me I couldn’t get back to the rally finish in time. I planned on arriving back at 4:30pm, giving myself 30 minutes of leeway before I started losing points at 5pm, after 6pm you’re disqualified.

I then added up all the bonus points to make sure that I had the minimum of 27,000 and that the mileage was over the minimum of 1206 miles. My route gave me 1227.8 miles and a total of  34113 points

I then made a note of all the bonuses in a notebook that I would have in my tank bag, along with my Estimated Time of Arrival and what evidence was required. With the ETA I could then keep track on my progress and ensure that I didn’t run out of time. In the end I arrived back at the rally finish at 4:31pm, so I was only 1 minute behind schedule after nearly 34.5 hours of riding!

I finished all the rally planning at 1:30am and then crawled into bed, after setting various alarms to wake me up at 5:00am on Saturday morning, giving me time to pack the bike and be ready for muster at 5:30am.

I had a good nights sleep and it seemed like only minutes before the alarms woke me up, a quick shower and a cup of tea and I was ready at 5:30am and queued up with everyone else ready for the start. I’d made sure that at the first roundabout straight outside the Cheshunt Marriott hotel I knew what exit to take – I didn’t want to have to go round the roundabout twice!

At 5:55am everyone started up their bikes and at 6am Roger started waving us off – the 2010 Brit Butt Rally had started for real!!

My first bonus was number 43, to take a picture of the tank monument at the 7^th Armoured Division of the Desert Rats. The ride up was fairly chilly and I had to switch on the heated grips, and the road, whilst deserted, had occasional patches of fog, but you could tell that when the sun burnt though the fog it was going to be a scorcher. The weather forecast for the rally was for it to be dry, temperatures in the mid to high 20’s with night time temperatures dipping to 10degC – so no need for a sleeping bag.

My ETA was 7:37am and I arrived spot on time, but I was in a housing estate and absolutely no sign of any Army base…..I checked my GPS and that was okay, so I dug out the rally book and bugger…..the GPS co-ordinates in the rally book was N52 32.298 E0 40.301, but I’d loaded the co-ordinates as N52 32.298  W0 40.301, which meant I was 71 miles away from where I should be!

This was not a good start to my rally so I decided that I couldn’t afford to do a 2 hour detour to pick up this bonus and headed on to my next one, number 30, the Grey Reef Shark at Kingston upon Hull.

To make sure I hadn’t cocked up anymore GPS co-ordinates, I checked each of my GPS waypoints against the rally book, and fortunately there were no other mistakes – phew!

I arrived at the Grey Reef Shark statue at 9:15am, against an ETA of 9:52am, so by not going for the first bonus had saved me 37 minutes, which as we’ll see later saved me from losing points at the end of the rally.

With my first 1050 points collected I felt a bit more relaxed, but I’d ridden nearly 200 miles, so on a point per mile basis I wasn’t doing too good.

The next bonus was number 11, take a photo of the radar building at RAF Fylington, in the North York Moors. 58 odd miles later I arrived at 10:41am, against an ETA of 11:20am and the MoD security seemed to be a bit pissed with me trying to take photo’s of their secret radar building, so I hurriedly to my picture and shoot of before they shot me !

The Lion Inn was my next call which required a photo of the pub sign, plus if it was open, a receipt. The ride up through the North Yorkshire moors was outstanding, only spoilt by the vast number of sunshine bikers slowing me down – but I did have fun overtaking every single bike I came across, and not one over took me – I was in the zone, planning each overtake with utmost precision – this was biking heaven for me.

As the pub was open, I went inside and brought a packet of dry roasted peanuts, for £0.60p and asked for a VAT receipt. The barman gave me a funny look, as if to say “Are you taking the piss mate?” but he went out to the back office and hand wrote me a VAT receipt.

With the sun blazing down, I refilled by camelback with water and applied factor 30 suntan cream to my face and neck and headed off toward my next bonus, the Penny Garth Café in Hawes, in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. By the time I’d arrived at 1:23pm I was sweating like a pig. It was getting unbearably hot, but being an All The Gear, All The Time type of rider, I just had to grin and bear it – now way was I going to ride around in shorts, open toed sandals and a tee-shirt, unlike quite a few other riders I saw. Haven’t these guys seen the results of gravel rash – a mate of mine once rode his trike without a helmet and had an accident – the top of his head was scalped, just a lovely big flap of skin and hair, the size of your hand had been ripped off his head, leaving a brilliant view of his white skull – not something I’d want to repeat.

I took the required photo and as the café was open I also got a receipt for a tea and a coffee, but left them on the table as I didn’t want any caffeine.

My next bonus was the Wasdale Head Inn and my ETA was 3:36pm, but the road to the pub was up a very narrow, single track lane that seemed to go on for ever and I didn’t arrive there until 3:47pm. However the scenery was outstanding and made the trip worth while.

From Wasdale I had a long ride over to Bamburgh Castle for a massive 1345 point bonus, but the ride to Wasdale had cost me dear in terms of time and by the time I arrived at Bamburgh I was 29 minutes behind schedule.

One item that I could have done with was a camera tripod, but I made do with resting my camera on my packet of cigarettes!

From one castle to the next one, Jedburgh Castle and I managed to make up a bit of time and cut my time deficit to 22 minutes.

Leaving Jedburgh Castle at around 7:30pm my next scheduled stop was to take a picture of the “Scotland” stone located at Carter Bar, a short ride of 11 miles away and arrived there at 8:47pm against my planned ETA of 8:30pm – so I was slowly but surely crawling back my lost time.

The sun was beginning to set, so I knew I had to push hard as during the hours of darkness my average speed would drop with the reduced visibility.

With the setting of the sun, the Scottish midges were out in force, making suicidal attempts at head butting my lights. I had to stop 3 times to clean my visor and the lights as they kept dimming to point you couldn’t tell if they were on or not!

A picture I took on Sunday afternoon, showing my Bio-Diversity collection programme!

The next bonus was located 57 miles away in Haltwhistle and my GPS routed me along the A69. This has now got to be one of my all time favourite roads – a real roller coaster of a ride.

Haltwhistle has a sign in the centre of the village indicating that it’s the geographic centre of Great Britain and was worth 638 points. My ETA was 9:39pm and I took the photo at 9:45pm, so I was nearly back on schedule, thanks to some “spirited” riding.

My next bonus, worth 1050 points was to take a picture of “The Arch” in the grave yard at Saint Bridget’s Church on the west coast of England ion the Lake District.

The problem I had taking this picture was getting enough light to show the arch, so I switched on all my spot lights on the GS and illuminated the arch – it looked quite spooky in the dark and god knows what any locals nearby would have thought if they’d seen the arch glowing in the dark !

I left the arch at 11pm, now 5 minutes ahead of schedule and I was now heading towards Keswick. Whilst there was no bonus as such at Keswick, it was en-route to my next bonus and I knew that I’d be able to get a machine generated receipt in Keswick so I could claim my sleep bonus, worth 5000 points.

My choice of Iron Butt Motel was a car park in the centre of Keswick and my sleep bonus started at 11:49pm, so I now had 3 hours to kill. I took the opportunity to force feed myself some snack bars, raisins and nuts and plenty of water. I then donned on my full face balaclava, inserted my mobile phone next to my ear and pulled the balaclava over my eyes and went to sleep by the side of my bike. This was my first time of using the Iron Butt Motel and surprisingly I fell to sleep straight away and awoke 3 hours later very refreshed.

I punched out of Keswick at 2:52am on Sunday and headed for Kirkstone Pass Inn.

Whilst riding along the A591 around Lake Thirlmere I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. What I thought were boulders by the side of the road were moving! I slowed down and it finally dawned on me that these walking boulders were in fact sheep, sleeping on the warm tarmac and moving as they heard the GS approaching them! The sheep weren’t the usual white fluffy sheep, but the wild mountain type and the colouring was just like the surrounding rocks – hence walking boulders!

The road up to the Inn was a complete nightmare, the “road” was so steep and with so many 180 degree hairpins that it was a struggle to accelerate and keep the front wheel on the ground.

At 3:38am I arrived at the Inn, now 25 minutes behind schedule and took the photo.

Making up the lost time would be next to impossible until daylight returned, so I’d just have to bide my time until sunrise to push hard again.

After the Kirkstone Pass I was now heading south towards Manchester to pick up the Chain and Hook Sculpture for 905 points. My ETA was 4:55am and I arrived a 5:51am, now nearly an hour behind schedule – could I really make up an hour in the remaining 11 hours….it was going to be tight, I’d just have to push hard and hope the traffic gods would be kind to me.

I arrived at the sculpture but the rally book said the photo must include the “Old Trafford” sign in the background. I searched high and low for this sign but I couldn’t find it, so I took several photo’s of the sculpture and the surrounding area and just hoped for the best when it came to scoring.

As it turned out later, I was not awarded this bonus and lost 905 points on the table.

Having done some searching on the internet back at home, it turns out there are two of these sculptures, the other one is around the corner and depending on which way you arrived at the location you wouldn’t see the other sculpture ! But what annoys me most is that the picture in the Rally Book was of the picture that I took, but what they actually wanted you take a picture of was this…..

Grrrrrrr – bloody devious rally master is our Pete !!!

From the Sky Hook, as it’s officially known as, I headed off south to Mow Cop Castle near Stock on Trent. I was now slowly making up the lost time and was now 47 minutes behind schedule.

From Stoke I was still heading south, eventually to end up at the south coast, and my next bonus was Shrewsbury to take a photo of Charles Darwin. I was making good progress, and as I was avoiding the motorways, I didn’t have any traffic problems.

Leaving Charles to his thoughts on the evolution of the Scottish midges and if they’ll ever develop skulls hard enough to break headlights I left at 7:37am, now just 24 minutes behind schedule, heading for my 15^th bonus.

At Monnow Bridge I bagged another 501 points and as luck would have it there was a public toilet next to the bridge which I made use off – the first time I’d found a proper toilet. As the saying goes, do bears sh*ts in the woods? – nope but bikers do!

I was now just 4 minutes behind schedule, so I was managing my time quite well.

I think it also helped having the auxiliary fuel tank, as during the whole rally I stopped only 6 times, where as with out the tank I’d have stopped at least 10 times, saving myself  at least 40 minutes.

I know had a quick blast from Monmouth to Bath to pick up bonus number 41, The George Inn and was now ahead of schedule, with 6 minutes in the bank, things were looking up.

I then moved on at a fair old click to get a picture of the village stocks in Keevil.

When I got back from taking the photo I noticed a few drops of oil dripping from the bash guard under the engine. It looked like that the cylinder base gasket had sprung a leak, so guessing as to how much oil I’d lost I dropped in 200ml of oil and just hoped for the best. I thought these BMW engines were supposed to be bullet proof, or maybe the Scottish midges were harder than I thought!

I was a bit concerned about the oil leak, but thought if I kept topping up the oil, fingers crossed the engine would last the rally.

I moved on with this nagging thought at the back of my head and ended up at Salisbury to take a picture of the Poultry Cross and arrived spot on time.

At 12:37pm I arrived at my most southernly point of my rally, overlooking the English Channel at the Maritime Museum in Southampton. Just across from the museum is the ferry crossing to the Isle of Wight where a bonus of 1888 points awaited for anyone brave enough to waste three hours on the crossing.

Leaving the museum at 12:37pm, I was now on the homeward stretch, with just under 4 hours to go before my deadline of 4:30pm.

My next stop was at Heathrow Airport to take a picture of the Airbus A380 model plane. This turned out to be quite awkward to get a photo of as the plane is in the middle of a roundabout at a very busy junction. I went round twice before spotting an emergency exit where I pulled in, switched on the hazards and quickly took a snap….

That was worth a massive 1380 points, so well worth the hassle. I was 4 minutes ahead of schedule and had just two more bonus’s planned before calling it a day and heading for the rally finish.

I had planned to go to the Cenotaph, worth 1150 points and then head to Greenwich for another 1300 points, but for some reason when I turned over the page in by notebook, I turned over two pages without noticing and headed straight for Greenwich !

As it turned out, I think the rally gods were smiling on me at that time.

As I made my way down towards Greenwich, along the Embankment and over Vauxhall Bridge, the closer I got to Greenwich, the worse the traffic became and the about of pedestrians was growing exponentially. When I finally got to Greenwich, it turned out that some pop star was holding a free concert – there must have been a hundred thousand people there, all the roads were gridlocked and my engine was starting to glow it was that hot, plus it was spitting out burning hot oil down my left leg – not a happy bunny.

I was just about to give up and head back to base when, like Moses and the Red Sea, the traffic parted, I saw a gap and the GS leapt forward and I was making progress again.

I eventually got into the park, after finding most of the entrances were closed at 15:14pm, so had just 1 hour and 46 minutes to get across London.

The traffic in London was horrendous, but I valiantly fought though the traffic, asking no quarter and definitely giving no quarter! It seems like there are speed camera’s every 100 yards – why the people of London put up with them is beyond me.

Finally I could see the signs for the M25, but I took the wrong turning and instead of heading towards the A10 and the rally finish, I was going in the opposite direction, stuck in roadworks with 50mph average speed camera’s…..grrrrrrrrrrr bollocks !!!

I eventually make the next exit, some 7 miles down the road and now had to plough back the way I’d just came on the M25, though the same roadworks, traffic, speed cameras etc etc before I made the turning for the A10.

I was very Inearly home – all sorts of  thoughts were going though my head…would the engine last (I’d used the last of my 1 litre of oil back in Heathrow), could I push 300kg of bike, in 27degC temps the last mile if need be (most certainly not !)

Then at last the Cheshunt Marriott hotel came into view and pulled over to say “hi” to Roger and get my clocked stopped………the time was 4:31pm, so only 1 minute behind schedule, after riding over 1300 miles in 34.5 hours…..not bad me thinks!

After checking in and getting my luggage to my hotel room, I peeled off my riding gear and stood under the shower for 5 minutes while the kettle was boiling. I was gagging for a cup of tea, my first hot drink since Friday, which seemed like a decade away.

Once refreshed, I sat down and started on the paperwork. Whilst on the rally I’d written all my times and odometer readings in my notebook and kept all the receipts in a Tupperware box in the tank bag, so it was just a case of filling in the fuel log, picture log, and rally book with the correct data.

Once I was happy with the paperwork I gave my wife a quick call to say I’d finished the rally safely and was just waiting for the scoring.

I went to the scoring room and chatted with other riders as there seemed to be a large number of us had arrived at around 4:30pm.

After a few minutes I was called in and before sitting down, was asked if I had everything, as once I sat down, that was it, no going back!

I handed over my memory card with the rally pictures, along with my picture, fuel log and completed rally book.

First thing the scorers looked at my fuel log and they said “Sorry, you put the day against each entry, not the date – you score no points” ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH……. NOOOOOOOOOO – I’d just lost 10,000 points – that was it a “Did Not Finish”……I couldn’t believe it, all that riding for nothing – to say I was broken man was an understatement. I just wanted to run out of the room and cry….I was totally gutted.

But I carried on and went though the scoring of the bonuses and the sleep bonus. All okay apart from the Sky Hook in Manchester, which as I mentioned earlier, I taken a picture of the wrong one.

I walked after the scoring and headed to the bar, and did what man has got to do, and proceed to knock back a few pints of beer……I wasn’t in a good moodand didn’t feel like talking to anyone, I just wanted to be alone.

At 7:30pm I headed into the banqueting hall for the evening meal and presentation….my heart wasn’t really in it to be honest, but I started to feel better when Roger announced that only 25 riders had finished – this had been one tough SoaB rally. Some had retired due to heat exhaustion, other to mechanical failure and some just had not done enough miles or, like me, hadn’t got enough points.

The first name called out was my mate John Rafferty, and as more names were called out, I realised I shouldn’t be sorry for getting a DNF – it was no disgrace to have actually been selected to enter the Brit Butt Rally, at least I had turned up at the start line, unlike some others, at least I ridden on some of the best roads and Britain has to offer and we had all finished the rally safely – what more could I ask for?

As the names were called out, suddenly I heard my name called out – surely a mistake?

In a bit a daze I went up and received my Brit Butt Rally badge, and it was explained to me later that I wasn’t deducted all 10,000 points for the day/date error, but just 200 points for each error. Thank god I had an auxiliary fuel tank, I’d only got 6 fuel entries, so I lost 1200 points. I couldn’t believe it….I HAD FINISHED !!!!!!!!!.......wayhay !!!

I was on top of the world, this was brilliant, I was so in shock that I didn’t even know where I had finished and had to wait until later that evening. In the end I found out I had finished 16^th……I’m completely over the moon, nothing that I can write and convey how happy I was, and still am – what a rollercoaster of emotions !

So that evening I celebrated hard, drinking more than I should have, but what the hell – I had earned it.

I retired to bed at around midnight with a happy buzz and a grin from ear to ear, which I’m still wearing whilst writing up this rally report on Tuesday evening!

On Monday I meant up with Margaret at breakfast and discussed what mods and some bling she wanted doing to her V-Strom and having squared that away, the two of us decided to ride together upto Towcester where we would stop at Jacks’s Café for a cup of tea and head our separate ways.

Here’s some pics I took along the way…

And finally, I like to express my most profound thanks to Roger, Pete, Rick, Phil and everyone else who helped to organise what I’d dare to say was one of the most emotional weekends of my life – thank you and hopefully will see you all at the 2011 Brit Butt Rally.

note to self, a lack of reading comprehension can seriously ruin your day!

Posted: 26 May 2010 at 3:08am | IP Logged

Great write up Shaun, well done.

Posted: 26 May 2010 at 6:07am | IP Logged

Well done Shaun it really gives a flavour of the toughness and emotions involved in collecting multiple bonuses in towns and on roads all over the UK with the vagaries of holiday traffic and roadworks etc.

Even Iron Butt Rally vets can't win it so just shows how tough it is.