Tiptree Heath

A lovely sunny Sunday ........

Our first 'single site' event held on a Sunday for decades. Good to see that it brought us extra company, Steve, Colin and Rosie.

All transmitters except the Micro were operating for 1 minute in 5 throughout the afternoon.

For what we are about to receive .....

Picture by Ian

Man who draws camera first doesn't have to comb hair for picture.

My first two bearings indicated that Andrew was in a large wooded area South of Halstead.

As I approached the area the Maxi B came on and my in car monitor signal strength hit the end stop.

I didn't bother to stop however as I wanted to confirm the location before deploying ancient legs.

5 Minutes later I was just off the official map (indicated by black line on my laptop) at the junction just above the last E of Braintree. Bearing 359!!! Since I was off the map I didn't bother to plot this.

The next bearing was a relief, at least it pointed somewhere on the map. The next stop was at V near Street Farm. A bearing of 120 degrees (not plotted) looked promising but again, after consulting my legs, I decided to drive round just to make sure.

See below - The grey circle just above the H of hospital shows where I parked the car. The Maxi was not on but Andrew's car was parked beside mine and I could see Daphne standing on the bridge over the river. GPS in pocket (hence the trace on the map) the aforementioned legs burst into supercharged jelly mode. As I ran up to a rather surprised 'Daphne look alike' I felt some explanation was called for. "Sorry don't be alarmed, you will probably see more strange looking people like me this afternoon" -"I already have they went up there ...."

Useful, the other strange people turned out to be Colin and Rosie. A couple of minutes later the Maxi came on very strong, a quick search (indicated by a blob in my GPS trace on the first corner of the river) and I had 20 points - Yes! Seconds later and Colin & Rosie had picked up 15.

I retuned to see if I could hear the Micro - weak and roughly North. My trace doesn't quite agree with the map because I didn't cross the river but if you follow it N to where a bearing (blue) crosses the river you can see my loopy search pattern for the Micro. 20 to Colin & Rosie 15 to me.

Now for the Minis (gaining a reputation for dubious parenthood).... I decided to listen for a cycle to get a vague idea of where they were (I ) appeared to be SW with (J) and (K) both NW but weak. Colin & Rosie had already set off in the direction of (I), no one else seemed to be around so I decided my best chance of picking up another 20 points was to continue up the side of the river. The large search pattern on the GPS trace gives a small indication of my battle with (J). A hedge containing a wire fence ran the length of my search pattern. Andrew had kindly wound the 3 metre aerial of the Mini around the wire fence. Each minute of transmission had me charging at a different part of it. Finally after crawling up the tunnel in the brambles caused by the wire fence I had approximately 10 body piercings but 20 pink points .... double Yes!!!

Off to (K) as I left J, my first bearing pointed vaguely towards the road junction where I had stopped for an unplotted bearing V but the field between me and it looked a bit private and so I went up the path to the road. A glance round told me that Colin and Rosie were on their way. Just as I got to the road (K) came on very strong and just across the road, I started to run along the bank of the disused railway signal peaking and then dropping -off. I must be very close, head into the bushes yes another 20.

As I came out Colin and Rosie were about 200 metres away and I thought my very brief visit to the opposite side of the road would tell them exactly where (K) was, but later I found out that they had not seen me go in, allowing them some very worthwhile DFing in dense undergrowth.

So 75 points and just (I) to find, looking good. Even the legs were beginning to show some mild enthusiasm though, as ever, team discipline was lacking.

You will see on my GPS trace a right-angled turn slightly complicated by a wiggle. This was my brief encounter with Larby. We exchanged the usual brand of DFer to DFer misinformation. As I resumed my journey there was as close to a scream as male vocal chords can emit. As I approached larby was gathering limbs and DF equipment. Reassembling them, a torrent of .....*!** ! now I've missed the * ! * bearing told me that he was headed for Andrew and probably not fatally wounded.

(I) took me several bearings to find. You can see various wiggles of searching en route. Now I am sure you are all thinking 'this guy is the real 'Superman' Clarke Kent was an imposter; so perhaps I should mention that one of the wiggles was caused by be me taking a sense on (J ) instead of (I). (I) was in fact located in the SW corner of my trace. Not a lot of searching once I got there because Rosie and Colin and left a track through the stinging nettles into another bramble tunnel leading to a 15 point pink ticket. No need to rush back to Andrew, it is only 3:40 and I know with 90 points no one can beat me. However, I am keen to find out where all the other competitors have got to and engage my most becoming smirk.

When I got to Andrew my euphoria was somewhat dampened. Only Colin, Rosie, Larby and myself had been seen. What was going on? All these transmitters set up and no one looking for them. Back at the splendid 'free tea' the fate of three of the others was explained. They had all arrived in the wood to the South of Halstead, the presence of each other, plus strong signals in a prime location had them all running North for kilometre after kilometre. Tim and Philip eventually made it all the way on foot. Without a map and after an hour of running, Ian decided to give up and go back to his car just when he was about to reach the site - we've all been there, and it ain't nice.