West Wales provided the opening round of the 2019 British Championship All Terrain Rally Challenge when Dyfed Dirt Bike Club ran the Brechfa Two Day Rally.
The club rapidly filled the 120 maximum entry of bikes permitted for the off road event in the Brechfa Forest and the surrounding area in Carmarthenshire, with riders eager to contest one of the many popular events put on by the DDBC.
With a dry but windy start early on the Saturday during scrutineering the organising team thought the promised rain might have held off, but as the first bikes left the start line at Brynllewelin Farm on Llanllwni Mountain the rain begin to come down.
As the day went on the weather worsened, not that that affected many of the riders who were tackling a 38 mile lap, of on and off road and going to be ridden three times by most riders.
Sunday morning however saw bright sunshine greet the riders who had travelled from as far as Ireland and the Isle of Man to compete on the DDBC rally, with the organisers having bought the start time forward to 9am to give them an earlier finish to the day to make their way home.
The course seemed far easier many thought, but there was still 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 3rd overall. The first rider from Wales to finish was Pepe Powell from Porth in the Rhondda finishing 7th.
The first local rider to finish would be Dylan Davies (right) from Newcastle Emlyn in 8th place overall and 3rd in the Rally Lite 1 class. Cefin Evans again from N C Emlyn finished 12th. Dylan Williams from near Aberaeron took 18th overall whilst Mark Wilson from Llandysul finished 19th. Anthony Davies from Whitland was classed as 22nd overall and Roger Hicks Llanelli 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 whilst Mike Forster from Dihewyd took the runners up position and David Jones from Llandybie finished 3rd. Shon Sarnau would take 6th and lady rider Mo Rapely from Horeb Brechfa finished a creditable 7th overall in the class on a tough but enjoyable event.
