(continued)

We drove North, round the eastern side of Milton Keynes, coming at station A at about 90 degrees, ideal for a cross bearing. When the signal came up at Little End, we took a bearing which gave a lovely cross nowhere near the large wood we first suspected, but indicated a possibility of any one of three or four woods, several footpaths and a power line!

With time ticking away I studied the map and found that one wood had a track leading towards it, the wood itself being another half a mile down a footpath. We therefore decided to “go for it”, and head straight for the track. When we were about half way down the track, the signal came on very strong, pointing straight to the wood. Bingo! It was quite a hike to the wood, the grass was very wet, and it was uphill. On the way we caught up with another team also running into the wood.

The signal indicated the station was at the other end of the wood, and once there it was just a case of searching in the undergrowth for the operator, and in the trees for an aerial. We found the aerial along the edge of the wood, and after a short while I found the operator hiding in dense undergrowth in a ditch, so frantically called Phil with the time card to sign in.

At that time, although we could not see any of the other competitors that we had seen earlier, we did not know how other teams may have done, doing stations in the other order. Wet, exhausted and a bit bedraggled we walked a good mile back to the car just as the clouds started to part and the sun shone for the first time that day. Was it smiling on us? We had to wait until after the tea (a superb tea, courtesy of Yardley Gobion W.I.) before the results were read out and WE HAD WON THE NATIONAL TROPHY for 2000.

Our time to our third transmitter was 1610.32, the second competitor’s time was 1617.19, and the third clocked in at 1622.51, in the event quite a margin with several teams managing only two stations.