Pompey Mick

Solent Fed have held at Yelverton, Grovehomer. Hope you can give us some early weather updates tomorrow. Best of luck with your race today.

I use the met office webcam at Exeter for visual weather reports. It is a 360 degree series of regularly updated stills. I think the clock is an hour behind BST. There are other webcams available in Wales and Scotland. The web site is www.metoffice.gov.uk

Portsmouth 07.30 completely blank grey sky, high but no sign of any breaks, Lt Westerly breeze

On it's way.

Where do the Solent Fed go from here? These knee-jerk reactions by a very small committee are no good to anyone. My members were looking for the Fed to re-organise the North road programme because of the limited mileage so far, not abandon it altogether. It looks as if we are now looking at 200mls max. I hope members have got plenty of room for the young birds after the season ends.

Solent at Yelverton (instead of Redcar!)

Well Tammy after having had to brief the birds about going from South to North I now have to tear all that up and explain that now they will be racing from the west. The uncertainity about this years racing is driving me mad. It is a good job that my pigeons don't know what a 'line of flight' is otherwise I would be in trouble, but having raced them from the four points of the compass in recent years it doesn't seem to upset them too much and I'm sure they will take it in their stride, unlike their owner.

I would like to congratulate the Solent Fed on making a swift decision on Saturday to bring the birds away from Wetherby, eventually to Melton Mowbrey via Clay Cross & Derby to give us a surprisingly good race ,considering the gale force winds ,with near 100% returns. As for blaming high losses purely on the change of route that is plain ludicrous, the weather we have been experiencing lately would give us problems wherever we race. I've raced North & South since 1963 and I would say we have horrendous South Road losses as well as North Road losses and it's always down to the weather.

Solent Fed liberated at Melton Mowbrey at 11.15 Lt SW

Solent Fed are brought back to Melton Mowbray due to adverse weather conditions, update at 12.00

The Solent at Wetherby is looking to bring the birds back to Matlock to enable a liberation. A wise move.

The Solent fed is at Wetherby 215mls, any chance of a lib today Speedbird?

Portsmouth update 06.45. All the early sun has gone, heavy cloud cover with rain threatening, hope it's a large shower, moving fast in the westerly winds.

Here in Portsmouth 06.15 its bright & sunny, have the Midland National let go yet? You can check it out on the Portsmouth webcam. Ifyou click on to the harbour entrance camera the lib site is visible in the distance in line with the harbour mouth. It is the green common you can just make out. www.seaportsmouth.co.uk

Solent is at Wetherby, Strong head winds & rain not a good recipe.

As the minisite is down at the moment, here is the top ten of the Hants 2b from Stratford. 1st; P.CAMPBELL, CAMROSE RPC 1357: 2nd S&K BRIMECOMBE, RACECOURSE 1348 3rd; G.MATTHEWS, BITTERNE PARK 1301: 4th VINCENT& BULL, ROMSEY 1298 5th; A.WEBB & SON, MILTON HS 1289: 6th A.WEBB & SON, MILTON HS 1275 7th; BOWDEN & AUGER, SHOLING 1251: 8th; M/M G.WORRALL, ROMSEY 1221: 9th M.JOHNSON, MILTON HS 1211: 10th D.ELLIS WOOTTON & BASHLEY 1197

Congratulations to P.Campbell of Camrose RPC on winning the Hants 2B Ch. Club from Stratford vel 1357. I will put the top ten on the minisite when I can access it. Don't forget your nominations for WETHERBY 1 this weekend.

Thanks for the info Bad Trapper, some of my members had poor returns 1/7 & 1/4 while others had good returns 10/11 and 9/10 your observations confirmed what we thought, that the birds had trouble leaving the race point, (except the winner). Given the conditions I think we should be glad of the returns we got. Luckily the birds were brought back from Melton Mowbray due to a car boot sale and this was our fourth consective race from Stratford otherwise things could have been a lot worse. We let go at 12.00, was there any sun at all?

A bit erratic with returns in the club but a clear winner with John Good winning the Milton HS by 9mins doing 1192. I was 30 mins behind but got 9 out of 10.

Solent Fed up at 12.00 at Stratford Lt SW

Portsmouth 06.45 grey and overcast.

I think the Solent were a bit sharp to call off. On the wind map it looks like an improving picture and as it's only 135 mls to me I feel they could have waited to 3.00pm. especially as the wind seems to be going northerly as the cold front moves away.

Here in Portsmouth it has greatly improved ,broken cloud and sunshine now, 11.15

Not yet Bren, doesn't look too clever in the Midlands

If Mary Couglan,the Irish Minister of Agriculture, has said that Irish pigeons can race under license from England from May 17th she must have been in contact with DEFRA to make such a statement. If this is so then DEFRA can raise no objection to UK fanciers racing from other EC countries due to this relaxation of cross-border restrictions.