A bit further afield this one - a National Event organised by SARUM at Big Wood, somewhere off the A303 near Salisbury (ish). We all left Crawley at 8am, which is a bit early for a Sunday morning ! Mike & I picked Anna & Peter up and headed off round the motorway, where there wasn't much traffic. It took us just under two hours to get there, going past Stonehenge on the way. Anna did ask if we were going to Devon ! We joked about going to Grandad's for a cup of tea afterwards !

We got there and it was pretty cold, although sunny. There was an exlusive four wheel drive parking area in the wettest part of the field, so it was a good thing we were in the Range Rover !

I made it to the start ok, just - the closest I've ever been to being late for my start time. I started off ok too for the first few controls and was feeling good running. I got a bit confused from 7 to 8, I was with a couple of guys who I think were on my course and headed out of the control, back towards a path I'd used to find it, but missed and found an unmapped fence.... This kind of confused us all. I came across some earthbanks and from the shape of them, figured where I was and found my way back to the path and onto control 8.

From 8, I thought I was following the earth wall out to a path, which is where I ended up, but not on the path I thought I was ! Again, one of the other guys I was with did exactly the same ! I figured it out quicker than he did too and turned round and headed in the right direction, off downhill. This was where my knee started playing up, in fact I had such a sharp sudden pain, I was brought to a halt ....... I limped down the rest of the hill, painfully and then back up again towards 11, which was fine. It was only going downhill that seemed to hurt.

From there on, I was definitely going slower, due to my knee. I did ok navigationally, except for 13, I went down a path, planning on going round and missed the junction (probably too busy trying not to go too fast and aggravate the knee) so ended up going cross country, which actually worked quite well in the end.

In all, a long a tiring day, I was 6th of 8 in 1 hr 37, still a Silver badge time though.