Sunday Trek Answers (PDF)

Adrian setting out Iffley Road clues

Firstly a big thank you to all the organizers who gave freely of their time to mesh together to make for (I think) a very well run event. 

The title? We never had an organisers diary did we. 

Prologue: Rob and myself pursued an awful lot of foot slogging through Oxford for three weekends. Without Rob's knowledge it'd have taken at least twice as long. Add to that the three walks that the teams did Sunday to test it, get the questions, photos & directions and the final walk taking all new photo's and refining the directions. Onto printing up the results from around the Tuesday onwards only to find assembly of documents shared between a near half dozen computers, discs, data sticks and e-mails using three different Windows issues made for rather slow printing. Having rebuilt around a quarter of the documents on the print out phase we got there Thursday night with the niceties firing off Friday morning. 

All the house crockery and cutlery was packed bar the pizza plate for Rob our now cat sitter. The kitchen ware and personal kit was transported to the site for around 14:30, Oxford Friday rush hour seeming to start from midday made for slow ingress. Having offloaded via trolleys, including one to the dormitory 400m up the hill over the wheel guzzling cattle grid. 

Before the shopping started we had our first arrival from Fareham. We commandeered him into the shopping and transport team, half way round Sainsbury's we started playing remote host too to the new arrivals from Solihull. Having got back and being half way up the hill with another trolley Dave phoned up with his "Adrian, your not doing much this weekend?" line, having picked his moment well the banter was a little shorter than usual from my end standing among defecating cattle playing wedge to a half hundred weight trolley figuring I used to be fitter than this! 

Having gotten some of the way to prepared many more of the organisers started to show and an impromptu BBQ was had on site that evening while a few went out to the pub and the kebab van having hunted for both for some time. Biggles's lift took him on an Oxfordshire pub crawl whether he wanted it or not. Luckily the driver eventually managed to release the handbrake, causing a great deal of worry to the passengers,... that they were now mobile! The rain almost held off all evening and aside from the real late comers most got to the dormitory in a semi dry state having negotiated the cow pat mine field in the dark, at least they're surface mines! 

The hard core pubers finally showed around 0100 Saturday and joined the snoring chorus in the dorm. Up at 0615 to make a start on breakfast the team mucked in with enthusiasm and expertise,... I'm not minding the toast again, I think I can account for approaching a half loaf of carbon in the composter. On the plus side it only took about 10 minutes working out on how to fire up the gas oven of three doors and eight massive burners, a sticky ignition switch not helping and the educated guesswork for the top burners was exactly that too. 

The teams rolled in for breakfast fairly evenly over the course of the hour long mad panic and we're sorry for the few who got luke warm portions of whatever due to one or two bottlenecks on resource and the out of turn servings when stuff was added to orders that weren't asked for thus transforming it into the next matching order. Having managed to wolf down a lovingly prepared toast and marmalade slice myself we got onto the team briefing and thence onto ferrying the teams into Oxford.

Reading wanted to drive themselves, "Why?" To visit the Trout on the way in. "Get in my car that's exactly why we're ferrying everyone out!" To be honest we did folks a favour, the early teams essentially got to their destination in short order to the station area of Oxford. The later teams ended up in very slow traffic and we extended their pick up time which would impact on their later events. The Trout is 'Old Kent Road' and your points are very low return for a massive time expenditure, you would have been in gridlocked traffic. 

Meantime the rest of the organising team were scrubbing up after breakfast ready for the evening BBQ. Team pick ups went well, though Steve's extended journey back into Oxford saw the people carrier with seven passengers for a six passenger journey,... = two journeys. This was at least broken up nicely the way the teams arrived at the pick up point anyway so no waiting was suffered by anyone. Communication that day was in my experience most excellent. 

Rob had been picked up ready for marking teams papers, he and others set down to the job and it was all done by BBQ start. The salad all went again! That's two on the trot the salad has vanished rather than being left, are we all eating healthier these days or has someone smuggled in their pet rabbit? Anyway we had tomato ketchup, so I was happy! All too soon the BBQ (hadn't) come to the end and the next task was set while the teams jumped into the various gateau's. Building your own cars to travel from the kitchen to the far wall of the eatery using paper, cans, bands, sellotape, paper plates and balloons. Janet asked if they could build a ramp thus using gravity as their power source, the answer was yes, and every other team took the idea on board too, well done Janet.

However that was actually the really clever part, Reading kept their real propulsion system top secret. 

First up saw Oxford's ramp mounted rickety Kart that had been hours in the making, replaced with a roll of sellotape that made it halfway down the room almost. Next came Coventry with their 'extension to the northern line' ramp that spanned about 1/3 of the distance, the rail buggy travelled along the rails, reached the deck,... and stopped.

Fareham with a sleekly engineered cycle utilising two sellotape reels, low friction hub axles, stabiliser/spoiler and strengthened rear bumper for the launch catapult, the spoiler caught the catapult bands and the low friction hub axles were swapped for a high friction sideways body slide. Solihull built a pill box on wheels, which did a good impression of said 500 tons of concrete on wheels when released, kicking it is not an option Gavin. Finally Reading stretched their bands the length of the room, attached to the gas pipe at one end and released the can body from the kitchen. It slammed into the wall at the end about a second later if that, miffed they hadn't demolished the wall they gave the new cut price space launching device another go to see if they could actually hit reception from there through the wall! At this point it was confiscated and sold to the MoD for an undisclosed sum. 

While this was going on certain team members were called out on duck hunting and a top gear quiz, watching Oxford vs. Solihull was like a blinking competition for the first two rounds. Despite that Fareham proved to be the most knowledgeable there, indeed I'd suggest Chris as the next presenter! As the evening broke up the teams were issued with yet more tasks to cheer them up further and folks went to bed to compete in the unannounced snoring competition, hey if you can't get to sleep you're not tired enough! Morning arrived just like that and it was breakfast time again. 

This time we were even more professional and eventually a few crawled in, breakfast was extended slightly as the late rush hit at closing time. To be fair to folks they had been busy tidying the dormitories, packing and transporting most of their kit down,... if they were in the boys dorm! Ladies 1 pillow per bed please, please leave them made, and the description from the boys that they figured the girls were playing '9 mens morris' with the beds last night was likely not far wrong.

Having set this straight and gathered all stray bags I transported everything back down and set about getting the teams off to the pub.

Having aided to set the first team off I rushed back to help with the cleaning to find it essentially done and packed, after booking out that took an age the rest went to the pub while I picked up our final judge and dropped off the crockery. Leo ran the football event, or 'annoy the whole team' event upon return, while Kath and Simon got them to dance around at the reservoir. Got to the pub in time to get the organisers tab & table together. The teams shortly reached the last check point after that,... unless they were called Reading! Or Fareham using their navigation skills. The marking was done, Coventry's sheets dried out from their bog surfing, mimicking of the earlier cooking panic, lost sheets located, cross checks, Readings arrival, more marking, compilation of results, issuing of results and cheers all round followed by wine bottle prizes.

Chances are the scores are now on the website, I sent them out first.

Home, unload,... feed the cat,... optional isn't it? - cat didn't think so! sleep, up at 0500 for work!

Comment of the weekend for me: "ALL OUT OF THE BOYS DORM?"            "Is Helen out?"

'GO' by the way is underneath the 'Iffley Road' sign, on the curved wedding hire shop wall, at the Plain Roundabout set in the pavement.

NGOOT is up for grabs for next year folks, give it some thought.

 Adrian Barnard.