British Champs

Off to the British Orienteering Champs, located 15km south east of Guildford in Surrey. Thank goodness for mobiles and google maps although we had one moment of slight panic when we were driving on the M40 toward the M25 (which is the main ring road around London) and read an electronic sign which said M25 at junction 24 closed. We didn't know the order of the junctions and therefore no idea whether we were going to be affected or not! Luckily the closed junction turned out to be on the northern section of the M25 and not the southern section which we were travelling on! Took us about 80mins to get there including a bakery/coffee stop.

Advertised as 'varied terrain with deeply incised hillsides and will produce fast complex courses with some finely detailed contour work' we thought it should be quite good. As we had requested split starts, I was allocated an open start which meant I could turn up anytime between 11 and 3pm. We were planning to drive to Southampton in the afternoon wanting to arrive before dinner and with Andy starting at 12.37pm it was decided I'd go first.

The weather wasn't kind (11C with intermittent showers) and the forest not much nicer! Lots of fallen timber meant that running in the forest was slow. Unfortunately for me I made a rather large mistake early on. After that I couldn't get into the map - had that feeling of wanting to run one way and the map telling me to go the other way. Eventually managed to make it back. I was wearing my new Garmin watch so we had a laugh when I downloaded my route!

In the meantime, Andy took the girls around the string course. Ella stormed off only to be caught by Katy and Andy near the edge of a forest. Andy asked her why she had stopped. She replied that she was scared of the dark forest and bears!! On finishing each girl was rewarded with a bag of lollies which always make the run much more enjoyable.

Andy missed his start, but otherwise ran around his course without too many problems -- except that it was a bit long for his fitness level. After he got back, we all had a few bites to eat and headed off in the general direction of Southampton before the showers resumed.

Here we were sort of back on home ground. And a good thing it was, because the iphone ran out of batteries before we could make our destination. Luckily we had some idea of where our friends Bob & Lisa lived, and eventually found our way to their house. More to come ...