Results

The JK festival of orienteering 2018 was held over Easter weekend on Cannock chase, just north of Birmingham.

A DrongO trip was organised with accommodation in the "Alpine Barn" - a small but cheap bunkhouse literally in the assembly area for days 3 and 4.

Day 1 was a sprint race in MOD Stafford. The navigation was very easy so it was basically a running race. After the race we waited around talking until 5 minutes before the prizegiving, when we decided to leave. However, the commentators announced that we should stay, so some of us did. They also called us CUOC even though everybody left was DrongO, so thanks for taking the blame CUOC. When we did leave, it started raining almost immediately, which was ideal.

Matthew and Fiona went shopping and the rest of us went to our bunkhouse, where we made a highly original meal of spaghetti bolognaise once the food arrived. We played games for the rest of the evening, and Matthew and Fiona kindly went out to the airport to collect Raphaelle and Cedric, who had flown all the way from Paris, and potential honorary DrongO-in-law Rona went to get John O from the station, who had refused a lift from Lancaster with his parents to get the train instead.

On Saturday there was a middle distance race in a nice but very hilly area. Chris (Matthew's cousin) missed a control out. Ben W made him feel better by missing one too. We spent the second part of the afternoon playing games again, including humming renditions of Uptown Funk from Ben, Bounce from Chris, and love songs at 6.03pm with Richard. We reaslised that the door to the bunkhouse didn't have a thing which beeped if it was left open, so everybody had to scream if it was open for over 5 seconds to keep the warmth in. In the evening we had a pub meal and were joined by a few CUOCers too. Most people bought a drink before the meal, but we think we slightly bewildered the pub afterwards because everybody just drunk a lot of water. Matthew and Ben took a diversion on the way home to collect Tom D and Zuzka S from an Easter church service, arriving with precise accuracy as they walked out into the street.

Sunday's classic race had the start about 20m from our front door, with the elite men running 17.9k and the women 11.4k. The terrain was less hilly than yesterday, but tougher with branches and bracken in a lot of places. Matthew reached the spectator control a minute ahead of Ben W but his jelly babies ran out so lost time in the second half. Paul P of CUOC did well to finish in just under two hours, while cousin Chris joined the 200 club running the furthest he had ever run.

We ate a lot of food afterwards, and Matthew had quite a long nap, then directed us in making veggie chilli from his bed. The evening was again spent playing games, and of course, eating more food. Ben W was branded "apple bitch" by Rona after he discovered there were a lot of apples left, so chopped them up which led to them being consumed. Ben S admitted that he would prefer to have rubbish thrown in his face than join in with the humming game. About 5 minutes after we turned the lights off, Phil and Chris were telling cheese jokes (what cheese coaxes a bear out of a tree?) and Dan and Bára arrived - they'd been in the Peak District and Yorkshire to go walking. Dan wasn't as loud as John was expecting so John probably complained silently to himself about something else.

In the morning Dan was as John was expecting, but it was OK because everybody was awake. We then noticed it had snowed overnight, and was now raining quite a lot. Luckily by the time the relays started, it had mostly stopped, although the assembly field (not to mention the entire forest) became very muddy. DrongO had an impressive four teams - SquaDRON GOld just slipped into the top 10 in the men's while the Outer DRONGOlia and Bosnia and HerzoDRONGOvina finished joint last in an identical time (but neither mispunched). The women's team, Democratic Republic of DRONGO also finished last, but one of their runners was injured and walking.

We finished by tidying up the bunkhouse, the owners inspected it by glancing in through the door for about two seconds and saying "it looks like you cleaned", and Matthew "auctioned" off the remaining food to the quickest bidder. Dan and Bara went to Stratford Upon Avon on the way home, discovering that the merchandise had a Shakespeare related item for every interest possible - including "an exploration of Shakespeare's world through maps". Thanks to everybody who came for making it a fun weekend and hopefully see you on another trip soon!

Following on from when Sarah Gales had a good Sunday back in 2016, it has been reported that she recently had quite a good Saturday, completing at least the following three activities, which happen to begin with the word "got":

• Got up
• Got married to Riggas, thereby making the "potential Drongo-in-law" mentioned in the London City Race 2017 report a reality
• Got driven away in a car the correct size for her. We still don't know how her new husband managed to fit in.

Further additions to the list are welcomed by email to captain at drongo.org.uk, as long as they begin with the word "got".

The wedding was near Wilmslow with the reception being at a place called The Colony, where Sarah's dad hoped that Riggas' family (from Australia) would feel at home. The whole occasion was very nice and the speeches were both heartfelt and amusing.

Saturday Results | Sunday Results

Day 1: Praga Magica

Ben W, Zuzka S, Miranda L and Dan S all flew out from Stansted for this weekend of orienteering. Dan was organising his race "back to the Goat" on Sunday, named after the famous Czech beer (Kozel, meaning goat) from his village, so he had flown out on Thursday evening. On Friday evening he went to a ball in Prague whilst the others were flying out, parking his van by a tube station so that Ben could chauffeur everybody back to his house afterwards. The roof in the car park was quite low, but not too low.

On Saturday we drove a few km to a station. Ben drove, because Dan wasn't sure if he had recovered from the previous evening yet. Unfortunately there was only one space left in the station car park, which was rather narrow, in contrast to Dan's van, which was rather wide. The 10 minutes spare we had disappeared as we aligned the vehicle in the spot, much to the amusement of some onlookers. This meant we missed the train and nearly missed the starts. Dan of course had somebody's phone number, who said that we would still be able to run.

The race was "free order" (like score, but you have to get all the controls as quickly as possible, rather than there being a time limit), and there were three categories: A, B, and C. All courses had the same map and you just went to a different subset of the controls, deciding which course after you started running, which was nice. Part of the course was around the old town, and part on top of the hill opposite on the other side of the river, which had nice views over the old town. One line of the final details was good: "Don't ask about the length of the courses, I don't know them, and the map, as is tradition, isn't even ready yet. If there'll be a map at all." As it turned out the map was good. Blanka and Mark Collis also came along from locally.

In the afternoon Dan, Miranda and Dan's younger siblings Sophie and Seb went sightseeing, and walked quite a long way, whilst Ben and Zuzka went to visit some friends.

We met back at Dan's house in the evening where we made dinner and some cakes for Dan's race the next day. We also helped to prepare some things for Sunday's race, which included Miranda imagining she was chopping people's heads off whilst using the guillotine to trim the control descriptions, and writing the numbers 1 to 150 on sticky labels.

Day 2: Opet na Kozla

Sunday was a forest race to the South-West of Prague in the forest next to Dan's house. Ben hung the shortest course by bike, while Zuzka started running straight away so that she could spend 6 hours on a train to visit her grandma for 3 hours. Isn't that lovely. The sun was out and Miranda tried to stay in the small sunny spot in the shaded assembly area. Dan and his dad dressed up as goats and sat at registration.

The race was a mass start with no gaffling, except for a single "control X" which could be punched at any time during the race. However, since this was the Xth Kozel race, where X==11, the 16km A course was called X, and included all X controls from previous years, so there was a lot of choice! The forest was fast but also quite steep in places, and the courses were planned well. It was often hard which route to pick, with quite a few over-or-round choices. Half the map had been mapped remotely by Dan using Lidar data, Open Street Map, and his memories of the forest, and it was remarkably good considering it had all been done from the UK.

Ben switched down to B because his hip was hurting, and just won between the last control and the finish. Miranda and Zuzka's times were within a few seconds of each other, but Zuzka's time included running to the start. Dan didn't run because he was busy organising the whole thing.

The assembly area was in the courtyard of a pub, so after the race we ate food there and sat around for a while, then helped to collect controls. We didn't manage all of them before it got completely dark, but Dan found two other people who willingly offered to go out on another day and get them so that they would still get to run the courses.

We ate pizza in the evening "because it was Wednesday" and went to bed quite early, except Dan who increased his sleep deprivation by sorting out various other post-race things. Let's hope his siblings will clean his bike for him.

In March 2018, DrongO didn't enter for BUCS, because the U stands for university, which DrongO is not. However, once Zuzka discovered that the party was (a) at Cosmo where you can eat all you like and (b) Harry Potter themed, she decided that attendance was acceptable, and so Ben and Dan planned to go too. Unfortunately it was cancelled due to snow, so they spent the entire weekend throwing snowballs with extreme accuracy at Dan's forehead. They didn't miss once, as can be seen in the video.

For a more accurate description of what actually happened, CUOC have spent their extra time writing not one, but two accounts of how they didn't go to BUCS.

This article was inspired by the CUOC article

On 24/25 March 2018, the DrongO flat (Ben, Zuzka and Dan) and CUOC captains (Paul and Helen) got into a relatively spacious hire car and went to Wales. On Friday evening we drove to Ben's parents near Rugby and stayed there. Paul was understanding/obnoxious whenever Dan said anything. The next day we climbed a hill called Sugar Loaf next to Abergavenny, and spent quite a lot of time on the sheltered side of the peak, which actually wasn't that cold in the sun. Paul was sympathetic/mean whenever Dan said anything. We arrived at the night champs with a bit of time to spare for Paul to be kind/unpleasant. The sand dunes of Merthyr Mawr were very technical for a night race and lots of mistakes were made. Ben was 4th on the men's, but still 16 minutes behind GG. Meanwhile the CUOC women's captain got into the medals with a Bronze, having beaten three people. We enjoyed some veggie chilli before a failed World Record Attempt for the number of people sleeping in one Travelodge room.

On Sunday morning, once Paul had finished being amiable/insufferable, there was another sand dune race at Pembrey forest. It was technically simpler with some easy running long legs to get between the technical sand dune sections. Paul came 2nd having caught Ben by 5 minutes, so there was some fun head to head running for a few controls.

After a short while eating cake on the beach in the sun, sheltered from the wind by a dune, we decided we should go back. Paul was pleasant/nauseating for the entire journey. We stopped at Aldi for food, Ben's parents for food, and Shell to feed the car.

The moral of the weekend is that frozen mango is nice, but only after waiting a short while so that it doesn't stick to your tongue.

Individual Results | Individual Winsplits| Relay Results | Relay Winsplits | Photos (Individual) | Photos (Relay)

On 17th/18th February the Varsity Match was hosted by JOK near Sheffield. There were 18 DRONGOs, 16 CUOCs, 15 OUOC, and 8 JOK entered. The accommodation was in a slightly remote bunkhouse in the hills above Hathersage. There was a cow in the barn next door. The postcode wasn't quite the same as the bunkhouse, so several people managed to go to a random different farm first. Dan arrived at the wrong place as Ben was leaving, and failed to interpret Ben's hand signals. However, he too found the right farm not long after. John, keeping up his reputation, told CUOC they should sleep downstairs so that he could have more peace and quiet, and continued drinking his brew. Dan decided he wanted a brew too, then Zuzka decided she also wanted one. So Dan, who had already got up to make it, sat down again and asked Zuzka to make his too. Smooth. James H, who was driving from Aberdeen, had estimated his arrival as midnight, and he turned up with impressive accuracy.

Saturday was the main Varsity match at Hathersage Moor. The parking was at Surprise View. Once the mist cleared and the sun started to come through, it lived up to its name. The area was quite physical with some tough heather and marshes, and early runners had mist to contend with as well. The course was good though with a nice mixture of long legs and short technical legs. Dan was the earliest start and Matthew was the earliest finisher, having caught Dan up by 11 minutes and then overtaken him three times. Results were as could have been predicted: DrongO won the alumni, CUOC won the women, and OUOC won the men. Top DrongO man was Ben Windsor, about 2.5 minutes down on the leader, while DrongO local Jenny Peel won the women's alumni match. After the match Ed Catmur invited Ben for a 'warm down jog' - which actually meant collecting most of the controls and running further than the course itself!

Afterwards went back to bunkhouse and some people had cold showers, some people got buckets of kettle water, and some people didn't bother. After many debates about the beer race, it was eventually postponed until 2 hours after dinner. Dinner was in a curry house in Hathersage, followed by prizegiving. Then the alumni went to the pub while the students went back to the bunkhouse with some cheaper booze, except Jeremy who was the only one to accept the offer from alumni to buy him drinks in the pub. Back at the bunkhouse, the lack of drinking receptacles meant most of the beer race was straight from cans. CUOC won for the fourth time ever. Looking forward to the second DrongO win ever three years from now.

Then the party continued with honorary DrongO DJ Philly V providing all three of his tunez. For the second year running, DrongO won the party, although CUOC did close the gap significantly from last year.

The next morning was the relay at Blacka. The terrain was more runnable but also more hilly than yesterday. Nick Barrable had armchair planned and the control sites hadn't been visited, however it still turned out to be excellent! It was quite cold so there were three mass starts 10 minutes apart. Well, four mass starts, because an unfortunate Fiona B from CUOC twisted her ankle, and so the nice people who stopped to help had their own mini mass start once she was safely back with her ankle surrounded by ice. We wish her a speedy recovery.

Once Dan had collected the majority of the controls, everybody was on their way back home!

Well done to Josh Milner for organising a VM with accommodation and relays, and we look forward to DrongO organising in 2019 - to be confirmed!

Results | Splits | Organiser's comments
Photos (Ben Stevens) | Photos (Sarah Gales) | Photos (Harriet Burdett) | Photos (Ben Windsor)

Arrival (Friday)

At the start of November an astounding 10 DrongOs sacrificed their bonfire night to go to the Luxembourg city race.

This was the first public orienteering race ever organised in Luxembourg and was temporarily funded by club members until the entry fees came in...sounds a bit like DrongO! Luxembourg orienteering club only came into existence in 2016, and its first race in such a niche location proved more popular than they expected with 350 entries.

David Roach from JOK was the organiser, with the planner and several other helpers being Czech - living in Luxembourg though. The city was a great place, built into, above, and below cliffs 70m tall - indeed the route to the start included a public lift going up these cliffs. There were also very few tourists around at this time of year.

Ben Windsor, Dan Šafka, Richard Watkins, Rory Burford, Miranda Leaf, Sarah Gales and Harriet Burdett flew in on Friday night and Ben Stevens came by train from Cambridge! Dan wore his bike helmet because he was scared he might annoy somebody too much and get hit.

Miranda decided it was a good idea to bring a wheely suitcase on an orienteering trip. While we laughed at first, we later discovered this was a valuable opportunity to reflect on the impact a wheely suitcase can have on a trip:

Minus	Plus
Difficult to carry up stairs	Guys offer to carry your bag up the stairs for you
Look out of place on a trip with orienteers	Fit in well with normal society
Gets put in hold on Ryanair flights	Gets a nice sticker attached to it saying "Free Hold Bag"
Only good on very smooth surfaces	Don't have to carry any weight on shoulders
Difficult to squash into luggage sizer if slightly oversized	Difficult to squash if a fat man sits on it

Upon arrival, it took Dan 108 seconds to use the toilet, Miranda 109, but Richard smashed them in a nippy 58 seconds.

We then got to the very nice Luxembourg youth hostel and then some of us went to find food at about midnight, ending up in McDonald's after finding that Luxembourg city centre is about the same size as Cambridge's. During the night Harriet dropped a phone on Sarah's head.

Training (Saturday)

On Saturday morning we walked out to a small forest on the edge of the city which had a lot of very well mapped knolls, and went training. This was planned by Ben with the map kindly supplied by David. There were 6 courses, each named after two of Luxembourg's 12 towns. Miranda twisted her ankle, but not too badly. Helen Pružina, who came by train from Germany, joined us at the end and we then went to the most amazing playpark ever, evidenced by the fact that even Ben Stevens came to play on the massive see-saw bridge.

Then we had the 'plat du jour' in a pub for lunch, trying to work out whether to try French, English, or German. It turns out that Luxembourgish does exist, and sort of sounds like German.

Next we caught the bus (buses are free on Saturdays!) to near the airport to another forest which wasn't properly mapped but was still pretty nice to run in. Here we were joined by Zuzka Strakova. There was a 7k course. Ben W ran first hanging controls and on return found some curious Luxembourgians wondering why our bags were dumped in the forest (not well enough hidden). We didn't need to worry though because according to the UN, Luxembourg is the safest place ever. Also their motto is very spritely: "we wish to remain the same".

Next we returned to the centre and spent the evening exploring the city walls, which also turned out to be the competition area, but hopefully this didn't help us too much! Having been on our feet for a long time, we went to bed relatively early and wrote a postcard for Dan, where we weren't allowed to know who the recipient was, and he wasn't allowed to know what was written.

The race (Sunday)

Sunday was race day. The courses were 3.7k and 2.8k for men and women respectively, but the actual distance was around double, with lots of climb and some really quite difficult "I haven't a clue" type route choices. Rory warmed up to his hour and a half long race prep playlist whilst intermittently pausing to take photos.

In the men's Ben W won despite several mistakes, but everybody must have made them! Ben S finished 4th with Rory 11th, Dan S 14th, and Richard unfortunately punching an extra control, not knowing that this doesn't matter in orienteering (it matters in canoeing) and so not getting a time. In the women's Sarah was 2nd, with Zuzka 6th, Harriet 10th then Miranda and Helen in 18th and 19th. Some good runs from DrongO!

There was amazing home made food available cheaply in the event centre for afterwards, as well as Czech beer actually brought by car from Czech Republic! We enjoyed this for a while then helped with control collection.

In the afternoon we visited the network of tunnels inside the rocky cliffs which was exciting, with spiral staircases and windows out of the cliff faces. It has some historical value but the rest of the internet (or Sarah) can tell you more.

We then followed a chocolate walking tour of the centre from the internet which visited 6 chocolate shops, half of which were closed. We went into one for hot chocolate and cake.

Before our flights home we had time to return to the hostel for some bananagrams and dinner. Luxembourg was a very unusual city and we recommend everyone to go to the next Luxembourg city race which is planned for two years' time!

Heats Results | Finals Results

On Saturday many DrongOs attended the British Sprint Championships in Milton Keynes. It was great weather. Ben, Zuzka, and Dan had all missed the entry deadline but offered to help, and were allocated the job of spare helpers who do whatever needs doing. Sarah Gales, who had also offered to help, somehow did have a job though, wearing a trendy fluorescent jacket. After a while, it became apparent that WAOC were incredibly well organised and nothing else really needed doing, so they went to Bletchley park instead. It was 2 for 1 if you travel by train (one stop from MK to Bletchley), but only printed vouchers would be accepted. After a trip to a non existent print shop which Google claimed was half way down a very residential looking street, they abandoned that plan and got a bus. Dan said something in the queue and had to do press ups. We decided the museum's favourite phrase was "vital" because almost all the signs claimed the thing they were describing was "vital" to to the winning of the war.

Back to orienteering, the author of the article assumes everything was very successful and everybody had a wonderful time. Many of the elites were missing due to a clash with a world cup race in Switzerland - we are unsure how BOF didn't realise this when scheduling it. Quentin Harding won M55 and we discovered that Nigel Bunn, 4th on M50, is also a DrongO! In Men's open no DrongOs made the A final, so the best result was Ben Stevens 2nd in the B final. Meanwhile Jenny Peel won W45 with Lucy Wiegand in 5th. Sarah Gales came 15th in the A final for the women's open.

Friday - Sprint, Wapping

The 2017 London City Race weekend consisted of three races, as usual. Friday evening was an evening sprint which not many DrongOs went to. Dan Šafka came 15th of 26 on elite, and Katrin Harding planned the courses very well! There was a route choice where it would have been quicker to cross the canal then to run round, but nobody did.

Saturday - Main race, London

The main race was based at the three-level Barbican. Most courses had the tricky bit at the end, hard because you had to do it when you were tired, but also easier because you had the whole rest of the course to think about it if you wanted to. Some of the shorter courses went there twice.

DrongO's best results of the day came from Sarah Gales and Eric Roller. Sarah came 4th on women's elite, 3:21 behind the winner, albeit from a slightly disappointing field size of 14, and Eric won silver on men's vet! Ben Stevens, despite his adversity towards urban orienteering, was top DrongO in the men's elite, finishing 15th, with Dan Šafka in 37th. Honorary DrongO Phil Vokes decided that the best route for 7-8-9 was not to go to number 8. He did realise at about control 23 but didn't go back and repeat most of the course, for which we are highly disappointed in him. We also bumped into a few other DrongOs there such as Miranda and Adam Leaf (Adam looked like he had spent a lot of time in the sun over the summer) and Rob Campbell. We also met 'Riggas', a potential Drongo-in-law, for whom this was his fifth orienteering race - he ran ultra vets but he will work his way up!

After the race we went to have beast pizza at the Dickens Inn, but they no longer had it on the menu! On request however, they made it for us! We were also joined by Fiona and her dad. Having consumed three beast pizzas between eight of us, we were very full. We discovered from Strava that CUOCer Paul Pruzina had made a mistake at the SHIs. He claims it was 10 seconds but we disagree. Then we started walking towards The Map Shop in Covent Garden because Phil wanted to get a map. However, only Phil and Fiona actually made it there because the others needed to go home before that. The idea of having a barbecue back in Cambridge afterwards was cancelled due to us being too full from pizza, and it getting dark.

Sunday - Ultrasprint, Victoria Park

On Sunday there was the ultrasprint in Victoria Park. There were three heats to be completed in any order, each about 1k long. The top four in each class then had a gaffled head to head final in front of spectators, with the rest of the field running afterwards. In the men's heats Ben Windsor finished first despite getting one 30s penalty, followed by Phil Vokes. Katrin also ran the men's because she didn't have an entry and swapped with somebody. The finals came and Ben and Phil had the same first gaffle. Phil got ahead at the start and held Ben up for a few controls with his version 5 dibber. They then split, and coming into the maze just before the finish Ben was a few seconds ahead. Ben then ran the wrong way towards the finish, Phil was distracted by him and also ran the wrong way, before both corrected it with been punching a second before. However, the print outs gave the same time (probably because Phil's slow dibber took a second to register the start), but Ben was awarded the win. Fiona P also turned up as an enthusiastic spectator, and sat on top of a cut down tree to cheer. Three other DrongOs also fluttered into the tree to join her later. In the women's final one woman had left early so Katrin self-nominated herself into the final as a replacement, and came second, but non competitively, behind soon-to-be-CUOCer Fiona Bunn. Eric Roller also made his final, but unfortunately missed a control, realised several controls later, forgot it was a penalty and not DSQ for missing a control, and retired.

After the race Ben, Dan and Phil went for a barbecue. Dan was dangerous/annoying to the public by running in the market so we banned him. Since Phil was the only one without a bike, he joined the banner pole sitting on the back of Ben's bike for a while. On the way back from Sainsbury's (to buy bbq food), we came to a dead end. But the nicest Londoner ever was just leaving his house, and he he opened the private access gate for us to let us back onto the canal towpath! Whilst barbecuing by a lake in Victoria Park, we saw Moorhens diving for fish, and some tourists in a rowing boat rowing in the wrong direction so that the boat moved backwards and they could see where they were going.

After this we went our separate ways and the weekend was done! The next city race is Cambridge on 28th October!

Day 0 (Thursday)

Jeremy and Dan set off from Stansted airport on a flight with one catch, that it didn't actually go to Prague. Dan put all effort into securing a window seat without paying for it. The people he sat next to were quite concerned he was going to upset the balance of the plane. The flight arrived early (big surprise) so Dan and Jeremy went to do some site seeing. Dan insulted everyone on the bus when describing Brno, which is known in Czechia for having a phallic statue. They went up a church tower and were deafened by the bells ringing. The journey to Prague took rather longer than expected with a two hour traffic jam on the motorway. Fortunately this was compensated for by a nice meal at Dan's grandma's. Jeremy spent the night in Dan's parents bed with bae.

Day 1 (Friday)

John had spent the night sleeping on a bench at Manchester airport although not much sleep really happened. The flight landed on time because it wasn't Ryanair. He then traveled into Prague on the metro to meet Jeremy who was very excited to have travelled on a double decker train. They went for a walk around the old town and Charles bridge which was packed with tourists. After a quick stop for lunch and to see the geological institute they travelled to the outskirts to catch a lift to the races. Dan had spent the morning mowing head-high grass in his garden.

About an hour later we arrived at the campsite, which was a field on one side of a quiet road, with the assembly area opposite. The first race of the weekend was a middle race. The terrain was steep and rocky. John had a accident when he slipped down a slope and caught his arm on the SI box holder, which resulted in a purple/black bruise. He ended up 3m below the control and had to clamber back up the slope to punch it. SI Air+++ would have been useful. Dan had entered the ultimate long (UL) course which had a special (messed-up) map. Today the map was missing paths and yellow areas. After finishing the UL course he did H21E as well. Jeremy managed to finish the course.

In the evening Dan received a delivery of bread, drunk lots of beer and woke everyone on the campsite when he was trying to find his sleeping bag. John and Jeremy drunk some beer and easily located their sleeping bags, where they had left them in the tent.

Day 2 (Saturday)

We woke to find some of the locals were already drinking beer in the assembly area, and one man ordered a shot of Jeigermeister for his breakfast. The start was again a short walk from the assembly area. The terrain today was steep and rocky, and the elite class had a long race with 780m of climb in 10km. The long course was technically not too difficult, and was mainly about route choice. The UL course used a combination of different maps of varying ages. Whilst the contours hadn't changed much, the vegetation was significantly different.

In the afternoon we went for a walk to Trosky castle which was on top of the hill overlooking Friday's race area and the campsite. The castle is built on two basaltic plugs, the result of an igneous intrusion when material in the mantle underwent decompression melting. After having ice-creams we returned to the assembly area to take part in the punching competition. This consisted of 9 controls in an area of flower pot stones. Each control had a pinch-pun which had to be completely within the box on the control card. Dan was one of the quickest 16 people and proceeded to the knock-out finals, but unfortunately he was knocked out in his first heat.

In the evening we met some Finnish people who were glad to talk to other people who didn't speak Czech. We bought some tea, drunk some beer, watched the video footage taken of the races, and headed to the race party. There was a mixture of Czech and English music, some of which seemed an odd choice for a party. God provided a lightshow of high level atmospheric lightning. Fortunately none of it came close to the campsite. Jeremy and Dan drunk some bread liquor. Dan managed to locate his tent and sleeping bag quietly.

Day 3 (Sunday)

Dan was woken by a group of small children standing outside his tent, who were naming the different types of dinosaurs on the tent fabric. He offered to sell them the tent, but as they were at primary school and still unemployed they declined. The terrain was very steep and very rocky, and could be quantised into about two different elevations. The elite course had a middle race on a 1:7,500 map. The UL course map contained only rocks and contours, although not always both. There was a surprise refreshment point on the course, where Dan had some beer and grilled meat. The forest was really nice and parts of it reminded John of CUOC Norway trips. Several controls were in an incredible rock labyrinth, creating interesting route choices of either navigating the labyrinth's narrow passageways or climbing over house size boulders, which was complicated by the often tricky descent back into the passages. John had a fastest split on one control, and Jeremy again completed the course.

At the prize giving the course winners won beer, bow saws and axes. We packed up the tents (Dan's was a real mess) and caught a train to Pilínkov (near Liberec. The train got a bit lost at the station we had to change trains at, and we ended up on the wrong side of the tracks from the platfom thanks to a confusing track layout, courtesy of Czechwork Rail. When we reached Pilínkov, we went to the pub for some food and beer, which was much nicer than the stuff on sale in the assembly area, and only cost about £7 total for three people!

We started walking up a mountain and hid the bags in the forest at about 800m elevation, before continuing to the summit of Ještěd (1012m) to watch the sunset. There is a restuarant in the hotel tower at the top, where we went for some more food. We were given menus in English, although after a while Dan asked for a Czech menu so he could provide a better translation of some of the dishes. At this point he discoved that the Czech menu contained some cheaper options not present on the English menus. We ate Svíčková, a traditional Czech dish (beef, dumplings, gravy, cream, cranberry sauce) which Dan said would be nice - it was. We walked back to the bags in the dark and put up the tent.

Day 4 (Monday)

We got up really early and walked to see the sunrise, which was cold and hidden by a cloud, but thankfully there was a handy ski chairlift to sit on. After a breakfast of bread and jam, we walked down to Liberec. John and Jeremy took the tram (and the bags) to the train station, and Dan ran, arriving only a few minutes later.

John left (to return to Prague) and made a surprise appearance about 10 minutes later. Even though he managed to decode the Czech shortcut for 'Bus Terminal' - well done - his bus was booked from another stop. The bus was awesome with free onboard films to watch. Dan and Jeremy spent significant time (and space at the train station) repacking to leave stuff behind and go for a day trip. Dan was also cutting his bread, using a sizable bread knife. Once finished, he wandered around the station cluelessly, still holding the bread knife. Dan and Jeremy discovered a cafe, where they both got a large latte, had their bottles refilled, charged phones and connected to WiFi. Dan was so excited that they almost missed the train. The train journey involved Dan further bragging about a race he attended last November, which involved taking a train to the start. The train journey ended in a village called Hejnice, where Dan and Jeremy visited a large church and Dan reminisced of his stay in 1998 (Jeremy had been born then, so Dan didn't feel too old). Dan suggested a detour to waterfalls, which were ok.

Dan then got distracted by billberries and started collecting them and very much slowing down the walk progress, eventually winding Jeremy into helping - seemed like the only way to get back to Liberec before the luggage storage closed. The rest of the journey involved several snack and drink stops, some dam stories from Dan - since they were near an infamous site of a bursted dam - which happened 101 years ago and the neverending forest only ended at a tram stop.

Dan and Jeremy then collected their luggage, spent some time in a nice pub before boarding the awesome bus to Dan's great Auntie. She turned out to have the dough for the blueberry cake ready so there was some late night baking going on, finishing a mere 5 hours before waking up for the airport. Jeremy much appreciated a tea by Dan's great Auntie, brewed at 4:20 am.

Equipped with cake, bread and rolls, Dan and Jeremy left for the airport - Jeremy's adventure continued in Germany, Dan's back in Cambridge

Rory came to stay with Ben and Dan this evening in Cambridge. Ben and Dan held the usual Cambridge Wednesday training on their own, and Rory joined for pizza. Ben forgot to go to Aldi so they had pizza from Tesco instead. Rory is going for an interview with BAS tomorrow, so there's a chance >0 that we'll see him back in Cambridge soon!

This somehow lead to a game of "guess the RGB value of your skin". Each participant gave guesses at their RGB value. Colour pickers were forbidden. A photograph was then taken of the competitors' arms, and their guesses evaluated. The results are shown below. Ben won on total value difference, with Rory just beating Dan into second place.

A couple of weeks ago Ben and Zuzka went to the Isle of Wight, and since Dan wanted to repeat his previous experiences of sitting in the back of a car with part of a bicycle poking into him, he also came.

Some amount of sailing and a large amount of cycling happened, but the highlight was going to The Folly Inn, where allegedly there would be dancing on tables at "about 9pm". Having been there since about 6pm, the dancing finally began at around 10.30. Dan, not wanting to feel like the third wheel, charmed a rather passionate 60-year-old on the tables.

Sunday's cycle began with five of us (including Zuzka's parents on a tandem) but after lunch we split into two groups, arranging to be back at 6.30pm. Ben's watch ran out of battery so Ben and Dan didn't know the time but thought they had lots. It started raining and everybody got cold, and upon return the "fast" group, who also had the house keys, discovered they were about 50 minutes late, and that the "slow" group had already been waiting for a while, been shopping, and then gone to the pub to avoid hypothermia.