Thanks to everyone for coming along. A very healthy turnout made for some fierce competition, especially at the sharp end where there was precious little to separate Pete and Tom in a sprint finish that had them both dripping with sweat. Well done to bath for notching a very impressive time – same goes for all the category winners. I was happy that the course broadly did its job of getting you all home speedily before nightfall, via some micro navigation that was designed to be macro obvious but micro challenging. The key in some places was to pay attention to vegetation lines and contours. If you did that, I didn’t think the Carl Wark pit was desperately onerous, although some people complained they were hunting in packs for several minutes before finding it. All I’ll say is that I dropped on to it straight away when I was setting the controls out. Same goes for the pile of fence posts. OK, it probably wasn’t marked completely accurately on the base map, but bearings/back bearings, orientation from the path and pace counting should have got you close enough to find it.

Best way round? I’d have gone clockwise, getting a generally downhill line on the tiring heather with fresh legs, and then attacking the long run home on runnable paths. Very little in it though between the fastest times both ways round. Cat Taylor put it in an extremely impressive Pertex bid. I’ll let her tell the story. After deductions for printing and beer, I ended up with a £6 surplus in the tin. I’ll donate it to mountain rescue, one way or another. More of the same next year, or have you all had enough?

DH