"It always rains in Wales" my father has been known to say. When I drew the curtains back in the morning I thought "Yep, you're bloody right".



But what's wrong with a bit of water eh? We'd agreed to meet in the car park at 10.15, so we all toddled down there to prime our road weapons. Below you can see a number of us waiting for the arrival of our Irish chum, MGO. From left to right: Jeff Spangle, RobinXR, Gary, Vix, Paul, BmwQueenie, BenLuker. As for the cars, there's Kilo's M3 on the right, Paul's 330d closest, and Ben's 330d tourer closest to Jeff Spangle.



Once MGO had arrived we set off behind Ben on a rounabout type route to Bala, which was the main meeting point for the day. We stuck to fairly major roads, but even so had to travel quite slowly due to the by now fairly adverse weather conditions. Here's a couple of shots taken from the tourer that should make the extent of the rain clear.





In Bala we met up with Woody, AndyCoupe, AlpinaB84.6 and Eminence. Sadly there's no photos from Bala as the wind and rain made photography impossible, so we wisely decided to head for the hills! There were ten cars by this stage, I'll list them as there no picture of the convoy:

BenLuker E46 330d tourer
Kilo E36 M3 Evo
AlpinaB84.6 E36 328i
BmwQueenie E36 318is
MGO E36 325i
Paul E46 330d
Jeff Spangle E46 323i
AndyCoupe E36 320i
Woody E36 325i
Eminence E30 325i

Bit of a Bruntingthorpe reunion going on really, 6 of the 14! Anyway, as in the Lakes Ben set off at his usual brisk pace up into the mountains. The roads became narrower, steeper and twistier. The rain and wind became stronger, the standing water deeper, the cattle grids slippery-er(!) and the sheep even more stupid. Eyes wide open, faces green with tongues sticking out the corner of our mouths , 10 Bavarian masterpieces opened their throttles and prepared to demolish the terrain. Oh yes, M.A.D. club was back and in full effect.











Above, from left to right: someone unidentifiable, Eminence, Paul, Kilo (doing something unidentifiable). Cars from foreground to background, MGO's 325i next to Kilo's M3, Eminence's 325i next to Paul's 330d, AndyCoupe's 320 next to Alpina's 328, BmwQueenie's 318, Jeff Spangle's 323, Woody's 325.

After the morning's jaunt, we slithered our way off to lunch.

Back to stage 2 or on to lunch and the afternoon