Navigation Exercise 16th March

By Tim Murray

Another new year well under way, so it was time to dust off the maps and Romer, and start setting my annual Nav Ex. There was only one slight problem – I didn’t have a (working) car available. So, unless our club archivist knows differently, I suggest that this may have been the first club Nav Ex to have been set using a motorhome and run by the organiser on the night using a bicycle.

Five crews turned up in the start layby in Rudgeway, slightly puzzled to see me on the bicycle. They were even more puzzled when they got their route cards. The event I set last year had been far too easy, so I tried to make this one a little more tricky by ‘borrowing’ a couple of tricks I learned from that master of deviousness, Dean Taylor, our Competition Secretary in the late ‘80s. The first involved using the back of the map cover as a source of information, and the second was the ‘negative’ herringbone – it shows you not where the roads are, but where they aren’t.

However, the tricks didn’t work. Once the crews had got over their initial panic and worked out what was going on, with one exception they sailed through the plotting and all had left the layby in good time. The exception was the Bird/Johnston crew who decided to adopt the easier option of switching to the novice route card and incurring a
25% penalty on their total score.

I then pedalled off to the Swan at Tytherington and had an excellent meal washed down with some really nice beer, so was in a very good mood when the crews caught up with me in the bar to hand in their answer sheets. Luckily for me, they all seemed fairly happy as well and most claimed to have enjoyed themselves. The results showed that
two crews had cleaned the event (as also had Bird/Johnston before their penalty) so a tie-break was required.
This was won by Mark and Matt, who reckoned that it was the first tie-break that had ever gone in their favour.

Results

1. Mark Astin/Matt Marples
   Fiesta 210 pts
2. Dave Adams/Chris Goodchild
   Land Rover 210 pts
3. Ken Robson/Martin Baker
   Focus C-Max 193 pts
4. Andy Moss/Martin Emsley
   Peugeot 106 161 pts
5. Paul Bird/Howard Johnston
   Focus C-Max 158 pts