Saturday 20th June
2009
Pete Bartlett had done all the planning for this, all I
had to do was check a few controls put the clue sheets out & with Chrisšs
help start & finish. This
after Pete was committed to other duties at short notice. The turn out of 40+ definitely made it
worthwhile, better than the last few events.
Most of you seem to have enjoyed the event, it made a
pleasant change, even though the bracken & brambles have taken hold. A few foolhardy of you even attempted
it in shorts.
Three quarters of the teams/individuals got the codebreaker
(despite him being in Essex, not the woods).
A few wrong answers included: The old man of the west, the
old hag of the wood and the old man of the woed. A few different techniques were tried including: Copy the
code breaker on to the map to avoid keep going back to the Longstone, & to
use anagram solving skills as opposed to orienteering skills.
If you want more of Petešs cryptic brain teasers see you at
the quiz walk on the 11th of July.
18 controls
were set out on the hill, some easy, some difficult. They could be visited in
any order. Each control had the usual punch attached.
At the control at the Longstone , in the
centre of the course, competitors found a sheet that had 18 punch patterns on
it. Each pattern corresponded to a
different letter of the alphabet. This sheet could be visited as often as
needed, but it is a very rugged hillside !
These
letters were entered on the control card against the relevant punch. Reading
from top left to bottom right the task was to break the code made up of the 18
letters ( it was " the Old Man of the Wood ).
As someone
said " You need to be able to get into Pete Bartlett's mind". NUFF
SAID !