Harvester Relay information can be found on the dedicated site.

This was a good area with good courses which surprised some people by their technical challenge. However, a harsh application of the rules left the webmaster with these thoughts...

We are pleased to announce that it is precisely six years until the provisional date for Varsity 2023, which will be organised by Dan Safka in the Czech Republic. Get keen!

Thank you from everybody to Raphaëlle and Cédric for their excellent organisation and hard efforts to make this French Varsity a Success!
LOST: a multicoloured scarf. Email Ben to get it back.

FULL RESULTS
Facebook Photos (Sarah Gales)
Facebook Photos (Rory Burford)
Facebook Photos (big shared album)
Facebook Photos (John Ockenden)
Facebook Photos (Dan Safka)

If you have another album of photos, please Email Ben to get it added to this page.

Day 0 - Arrival

Most of the students travelled out on Monday. OUOC had enough transport to drive there. CUOC came in a car and a plane. For the car there was some excellent entertainment on the ferry watching curling, and Emma doing burpees for arriving last to the meeting point in Cambridge. The flying CUOCers decided to get a ridiculously slow commuter train from Paris because it was cheaper, which was very much not worth it and Jamie P from OUOC had to drive late to pick them up. The only hostelised alumni at this point were Ben W and, JOKer Scott Collier, with DrongOs Rory Burford and Helen Pruzina braving the outdoor world of camping.

Day 1 - The boring one arrives

This was the first day of training, planned by OUOC. There was a choice of introductory loops of varying difficulty, or a mega 8.5k course across the whole area (which nobody did, although some alumni did do quite a lot of it later in the week). It was in a very runnable area very near to the hostel. The terrain was a mixture of flat areas with not many features, and areas of very complicated boulders which were almost all individually mapped. Control hanging was fun but fortunately the planners seemed to have taken the planning advice and not picked random rocks in the middle of boulder fields as control sites.

Ben W hired a bike from the hostel but it was way too small and his knee hurt by the end of the day riding it. The fourth DrongO to arrive, John Ockenden, came by bike having cycled from Dieppe and slept in forests. If you would like to know where John deposited waste so that you can avoid it when you go cycling in France, he can provide you with a map. To make his cycle less boring John had a text conversation with Ben. To make up for John's boringness a photo of an interesting person has been included here.

At some point we also discovered we didn't have the hostel to ourselves and there were about 3 others staying there. They were rather overwhelmed by our group it seemed.

Day 2 - Party Car Arrives

Training was on the other half of the same area as yesterday, planned by Ben W. After he left the maps at the hostel, OUOC kindly delivered them and control hanging was not delayed by too long. In the afternoon about half the people went to join in on a French club's training - there were about 100 French people there including a coach load of school kids. Ben thought a control was in the wrong place, but when he asked a fast-looking French person, he just said "it's within 50m so it's fine". CUOC's already slim chances of winning Varsity were slimmened as Paul mildly twisted his ankle and Jeremy hurt his knee.

In the evening Matt Vokes and his honorary DrongO brother Phil arrived in a car, as did Sarah G, Dan S, Natalie H, James H and Ben S, crammed into Sarah's car and arriving at 1am. Ben S did well to avoid having to talk listen to Dan by getting an earlier train from Cambridge to meet Sarah's car. In the car it turned out that Natalie hadn't fully recovered from seeing Dan for 3 days in Slovenia and had nearly killed Dan by the end of the journey.

Day 3 - Learning French Course Names

We moved on to a different training area which had some dead bracken on the floor, and the rocks were not quite as nice, but it was still good. This was the CUOC-planned day with loops (named in French) in the morning and a peg relay in the afternoon. Some of the more mature members of the group decided it would be fun to fell a dead tree, which served quite well as a bench afterwards. Those not running in the peg relay had fun hiding the "bonus" pegs in interesting places, including underground, between the chain and cog of John's bike, and in the middle of doughnut-shaped horse poo. All the bonus pegs were found, but we still don't know who won.

It was raining on and off but some keen alumni went and did some of OUOC's epic loop meant for Day 1 so that they could enjoy the terrain they'd missed out on by not coming for the whole week. In the evening we had pizza from the pizza van. Those who didn't order anchovies on their pizza had an amazing pizza.

Day 4 - A lot of Veggie Chilli

The training area was the same again as yesterday, planned by Bae. Friday morning saw the arrival of Blanka and Mark Collis, who instead of bringing their kids brought cuddly toys. Oxf*rd felt pleased that they were not as dumb as Paul after watching him hit things with a stick for the third day in a row. The evening was the hardest for food, with Matthew leading veggie chilli making for over 30 people. There were options to have it with any/all of pasta, rice, and cous cous. Impressively there was quite a bit left over afterwards too! Organisers Raphaelle and Cedric also arrived by the evening, as well as a lot of other DrongOs and JOKers who were just joining for the weekend.

Day 5 - Varsity Individual

The big day: Varsity 2017. Unfortunately the race clashed with a JWOC selection race in the UK so neither student team had their best runners present. Despite that, there were still around 60 runners. A fair number of people were injured, and some JOKers thought it wasn't fair that they had so few injured people so three of them decided to mispunch on the same control. Just as it looked like John O was going to take a surprise win for the alumni Varsity match for DrongO, Nick Barrable came in and finished three minutes quicker than him. JOK took the top two spots in the women's with Katrin Harding 37 seconds behind in 3rd, all beating the current students. Overall OUOC won both the Men's and Women's team competitions by quite a long way, and DrongO won the alumni match.

In the evening was the Varsity meal. Before this though was the Very Important Beer race though. Ben W very optimistic for a DrongO win but both OUOC and CUOC closely beat them, although rumour has it that there was some dubious drinking going on, and CUOC had a guest competitor from a less geeky (aka better at beer races) university. The meal was a tasty buffet delivered by some caterers. Afterwards was the prizegiving and we presented the organisers with some thank-you presents. Oxf*rd had made some custom-labelled bottles of wine, which while the thought was well received, the screw caps were not. DrongO also won the party, Natalie managed to take down a table and DrongO were the last to go to sleep too, even managing to do some tidying up in the early hours. Jon M, being the only person there who wasn't drinking AND was stupid enough to take drunk OUOC to a shop, took drunk OUOC to a shop to top up on drinks.

Day 6 - Varsity Relay

The Varsity relay day started out with 30 baguettes and 50 croissants from the bakery. The relay was on the same area as the Varsity match but fortunately was a bit less technical so made for some good fast racing. Teams were mixed to make them approximately even, and there were three mass starts rather than handovers to make sure everybody finished in time to get their flights/trains/boats. Jack Smith from Oxford just slept on the floor for the whole time. Apart from a missing control confusing many people, everything went very well!

Matthew took Helen P and Paul P to Paris on the way back. Helen P had to have saucepan on her lap because the car had a lot of stuff in it. For the rest of the journey back passengers did good job of keeping drivers awake. Dan was surprised by how much longer it took by car than by train, but the trains do go 2.5x the speed of the car and don't have to go on a ferry.

Arrival

Drongo's latest trip to Slovenia had a 50% attendance improvement since Spain, as Ben Windsor, Dan Šafka and Natalie Holroyd set off for an extended weekend. Natalie and Dan managed to go to work before the flight, while Ben abandoned that idea and cycled to the airport instead. Ben and Dan got lucky with the emergency exit row seats with extra legroom. Natalie arrived quite close to the departure time of the flight and said "I got the train 15 mins before what I had planned".

Sorting out car hire on arrival in Trieste (Italy) also didn't go too well, but after about 2 hours we got hold of a very small rubbish car, but it did have a USB port. We then went to have pizza, at which point Dan noticed he had had his lights off for about 10k of driving. Ben forgot this trip was not to Spain and asked if anyone knew Spanish.

After food, we drove across the border into Slovenia. Dan stopped at the border to ask the police where to buy a Slovenian motorway disc and amused them by asking if we were allowed to drive the 1k of motorway without it to get to the services which sold them.

The accommodation was on the floor of a classroom of a school joined onto a youth hostel - strange combination.

Day 1

On Saturday was the first race of the 5 day Lipica open, of which we were only attending the first three days. We offered a German guy a lift but then he disappeared and went with someone else. The forecast of pure sunshine, all day, every day, for our whole trip, didn't disappoint. Today was a middle race. The terrain was quite slow and very rocky. Natalie managed to finish 8 minutes within the time limit in her first forest orienteering for about a year and a half, finishing last. Ben might have broken something in his foot so wasn't running. Dan was excited by the pancakes at being sold in assembly by Czech people who knew who he was, but his memory somehow didn't recall meeting them.

Afterwards we became tourists and walked up a 1200m hill with a radio mast on top. There were great views of the snowy Alps, across the sea to the east coast of Italy, and inland to the isolated snowy peak of the highest non-alpine Slovenian peak. It wasn't dark when we got back, so we went to visit a castle built into the entrance to a limestone cave. Then it was dark so we went to the pub for dinner and beer. Later, Dan kept snoring so Ben kept poking him to make him be quiet.

Day 2

Sunday was a normal distance race. Our starts were a bit later so we walked up a small hill by the schostel whilst eating tasty pastries. Ben accidentally stole and ate Dan's one though. Then Dan and Natalie went on their own to the race while Ben hired a bike. The terrain was less physical but had very complicated contours and too many pits. Natalie improved to third last and Dan assures us he "did awesome".

Ben cycled up another 1200m mountain and cycled down a ski slope part of the way down, but returned to the track when the brakes started smelling.

Everybody reunited with a bit of time before dark so we drove up a road, stopping at 5 caves along the way. The caves were rated as follows:

Name	Score	+	-
A	1.0	looked dark	wasn't really a cave
B	5.5	scary	not as deep as the others
C	8.0	massive with a river in the bottom	access blocked by a massive fence
D	6.5	you could throw things into it	things took 3s to hit the bottom
E	7.5	had some sign of stalag(m+t)ites	access blocked by fence

Then it was dark so we went to the pub for dinner and beer. Dan was very excited that the bakery was open until 10 pm so he could buy bread even at this time. We had large portions of dessert too. After this we had some fun building with the giant tetris shapes at the schostel, and then had the least antisocial WhatsApp conversation ever. Natalie threatened to bottle Dan if he snored. Despite being less restrained with his poking, Ben still failed to stop Dan snoring.

Day 3

Our final day, Monday had the same assembly area as Sunday, but with a disastrous lack of pancakes. We stopped for a quick look at a stalag(m+t)ite cave which Ben had gone into on Sunday, but Dan and Natalie were told they needed a ticket! Both had a better run today, Natalie was getting used to thes terrain, up to 5th from last, and Dan hadn't had a pre race pancake.

We then had time for a very quick visit to Trieste for a look at the sea and some ice cream, and then a tight schedule to catch the flight. Dan's rucksack got Ryanair size checked, but it fitted so it was free. Neither Dan nor the check in people could believe it.

Three members of DrongO made it to a race called Praga Magica - a Prague City Race. The organiser has been mapping parts of Prague old town for the last 10 years. Dan Safka had a pleasant run, apart from falling into a trap set by the organiser - a former railway, now a cycling path inaccessible from the road running below it, meaning an extra 800m run. Since the race was a score, route choice was fairly straightforward, although important whilst in the old town. Dan came Xth, Mark Yth and Blanka Zth in women. X, Y, and Z are yet to be determined since the results aren't working.

Blanka and Mark Collis took about half an hour to get there, whilst Dan flew over from Cambridge. Dan also attended a North Bohemian Youth Talented Squad training weekend. North Bohemia has the best terrains in Czech, e.g. Varsity 2011 (and 2023, probably). For some reason the training took place about 6k away from Dan's house in Central Czech on a fairly flat map full of thickets. It felt a bit like if LOC decided to go to Thetford. Although there were some nice runnable bits.

Dan has continued building up his reputation. He ran a 1am version of the night race straight after landing in Prague on Friday night. The people on the midnight train were hoping they would not find a news article the next day about a desperately lost runner. After two hours of running he returned to find out he had been locked out of his room by his "friends". They claimed it wasn't intentional... Finally, at the main race of the training weekend, Dan was overtaken by a talented W16 and for the three controls which they were together for, Dan did not manage to catch up. At the finish it turned out her controls weren't actually Dan's...he mispunched twice.

Dan had Monday off work, so he decided to go to North Bohemia and walk around one of the best maps in the country. On the way back, Dan was changing buses in the home of the heavenly North Bohemian bread (featured in the Spain report). The 10-minute sprint-for-bread was just about successful and, based on his keenness for the bread, Dan was given a loyalty card, where he can put little bread stickers :).

Most may not be aware that over a few months, the DrongO slowly and painfully lost its leg. It was ripped from the DrongO's body bit by bit each time it attended a DrongO trip. However, we are pleased to report that over the Christmas period the DrongO returned to its birthplace and underwent an operation to have its leg reaffixed. It was a success and the recovery has gone well, and the DrongO will be attending the Varsity match this month in full fitness.

Night Champs | Northern Champs Results

A load of DrongOs came to the British Night and Northern Champs. A group from Cambridge, including a not-yet Drongo offer holder Paul (but I think we'll make him one), attended a training session beforehand. It was pretty good, especially with the contour only map. It was a good way to get back into Lake District terrain for those who don't live there. We then went straight to the night champs and being one of the first to arrive, got prime parking. Quentin H also got prime parking because he "knows people". The night champs were at Great Tower, well known to everyone in DrongO as the location of the Varsity relays in 2015. After talking for a while about how nobody had brought anything fun to do, Paul decided to mention that he had brought bananagrams, so we played for a while.

Top 10s: Matthew V was 10th on M21L, but for beaten by his little brother by two minutes. Quentin Harding won M55. Katrin Harding was 6th on W21, and Jean Payne was 8th on W60.

Dan forgot to bring his whistle, control description holder, water, enough food, and then left his sleeping bag behind when we left. He also only realised he was meant to exchange his dibber for a higher capacity one in the -2 box. Afterwards some people stayed with Matthew V and some with John O. John O fed us crumpets when we got there.

Sunday was the northern championships on Bigland. It rained for a while and then it was dry, then everybody went home. Zuzka pretended that she had entered elite, but somehow ended up on long, so only had to run 9k. The courses were certainly long enough, with Graham Gristwood winning M21E in 99 minutes. Dan had his longest split yet at 27:56 for the 3k long leg, 9 minutes behind the winner's time. John O caught up with Dan towards the end, and despite Dan getting away again he didn't manage to make up enough time, probably because he didn't have any bread in his pocket. The only DrongO medal winner (I think) was Quentin Harding, winning gold on M55L.

Results

Drongo's smallest trip yet (hint hint come on the next trip) happened this weekend, attended by just Ben and Dan (I hope you feel sorry for Ben). It was to Costa Calida in Spain. They booked a romantic gym floor along with many other orienteers, some of which didn't understand that the roof of the gym was actually waterproof and felt the need to put up tents inside.

The trip began well with the guy in front of us on the plane telling us to stop pressing his seat. Ben and Dan both became experts at opening and closing the tray tables as neither had brought anything to do. The old lady next to us clearly noticed, as she asked us to close hers for her towards the end of the flight.

After buying the excess reduction as a punishment for not having a credit card, our hire car took us to Cehegin where the gym was. Not before we had discovered that "via de servicio" doesn't mean service station, but rather a random small road leading to nowhere. It was late by now but a kebab shop was open so we settled for that, although Ben thought they ruined the chips by putting mayonnaise on them.

On Saturday was a classic race in the morning and sprint in the afternoon. On the way we picked up a Swiss hitchhiker, who had much better directions to the race than we did, which saved Ben missing his start. The classic race had a lot of low visibility but passable first, and some massive reentrants, making route choice important. Route choice was snap affected marginally by the location of the many water stations, which were important because despite being February, it was 15 degrees, and feeling even warmer with the sunshine. Dan finished in 2 hours 31, while injured-again Ben walked it in 3 hours 20, and didn't quite come last. We thought we saw Gustav Bergmann but apparently it was some lookalike.

This also marked the entrance of the infamous North Bohemian Youth Talented Squad, who Dan claims he knows, despite not being north Bohemian, young, or talented. He had organised an exchange of his beloved Czech bread for British shortbread, which worked well for both parties. Meanwhile Ben fell asleep in the sun wearing only two layers.

We then drove to the sprint, got off at the wrong junction and accidentally found the sprint car park. The sprint was super technical and one part was almost maze-like, and it was very steep. Men's elite was only 3.3k actual distance but was won in 16:04. Dan's run was alright and he only got caught by a Czech ex world champion starting a minute behind 1/3 of the way round, finishing in 23:34.

In the evening we had tapas, mostly seafood, which was very tasty.

Sunday was a middle race with a chasing start based on Saturday's results. This area was much more runnable with a mixture of forest and open, but with tricky contours in places. Dan finished in 50 minutes, and after a lot of warming up Ben decided he was good to run and finished in 47. Both were put to shame by a Czech M20 finishing in 40 though. It was much cooler today and windy, but at least we had one day of Spanish sunshine.

We then joined the junior squad from Czech on a visit to a canyon. It failed rather early when the bridge on the map was closed, but Dan swam and Ben picked up a massive reed so both were happy. As the gym was now closed, the coaches kindly offered us space on their floor for the night, and for us to use their awesome sand dune maps for some training on Monday. Their coach was Tomáš Dlabaja, who was in the Czech relay gold medal team at WOC 2012, hence it was rather interesting listening to their debrief.

In the morning Dan got up early to see the sunrise but there wasn't one, however he did find a training kite in the forest, followed shortly by a fast moving Daniel Hubmann punching it. The female juniors also discovered him shortly afterwards and were extremely excited to have a photo with him.

Ben then woke up and we went to Lidl, bought breakfast and 4kg of oranges, then had a slightly sandy breakfast on a very windy beach. We returned to the camp to go training, wearing o kit with Dan looking strange carrying a thank you bottle of wine (for the coaches) at this time in the morning.

We had a great pairs training in the sand dunes and caught up a Czech pair, then had some good racing with them for the rest of the course. Ben then decided he shouldn't push not being injured too much and Dan went out for two more sessions. One was a letter N outlined by a course, which Theirry had run at night in 16 minutes. Dan took 48 in the day and as he left the finish, realised that he hadn't actually found it.

We then went to the airport, drunk the litre of beer left in the boot (Ben had to drink more quickly to stop Dan having all of it), and ate several oranges each.

Next stop, Slovenia in early March!

Oxford Results | Shotover Results | Photos (Facebook)

As usual a group of people from DrongO and CUOC went to the Oxford City Race. Unusually though, the assembly field sported an OUOC banner, but not a CUOC one. In previous years this was the other way round. The race itself had to be one of the best Oxford City Races so far. It was planned to keep you thinking, and even on the longer legs if you didn't plan ahead for the shorter, trickier bits coming up, you would find yourself losing time on them. The courses visited the inside of some colleges and there was a control on the bridge of sighs. This meant that Ben W had seen the Venice, Oxford and Cambridge bridges of sighs all within a week.

On the Men's Open DrongO was certainly the best club, with Ben Windsor winning and James Hoad coming third. Sarah Gales also did well to finish 3rd on Women's Open. There was yet another DrongO 3rd place from Kevin Harding on Men's Supervets.

Following the race there was a combined DrongO/CUOC meet in the Gardener's Arms, a vegetarian pub, where plenty of tasty nosh was consumed. Hallvard, our Norweigian comrade who is now studying in St. Andrews, unfortunately didn't make it to the pub as his overnight 14 hour coach journey, followed by no breakfast and a race, hadn't left him feeling his best.

Most people then left - Natalie H was off to London for her birthday celebrations while fresher DrongO George Johnson went back to Birmingham and Ben S braved his second four hour stint of the day on the X5. The four CUOCers who came to the pub were spared the second stint by James who was driving to Cambridge for a dinner there. This left Ben W, Tom D and Sarah G who were staying for the race the next day. They visited the Natural History Museum and played guess which animal the skeletons were before looking at the sign. The evening was spent cooking brownies and curry at Sarah's house, followed by a good stretching session and a game of Linkee (Sarah, as usual with games, was the best at it, although we did surprise one of her housemates by telling her that Sarah didn't always win Bananagrams when playing with us).

After a very long night of sleep, the excitement of Sunday morning came when Tom complained that Sarah had not cut the Tiger bread straight. So Sarah cut it straight and ate the slice, much to Tom's disappointment at the volume of his lunch marginally decreasing in size. Then we drove to Shotover for Sunday's race, and it was raining. Ben decided that he would leave the car at 10:30 by which time his breakfast might have gone down enough. Fortunately it had stopped raining by this time, so it was only cold and not cold and wet.

Back in another two years for a DrongO member to take a third consecutive Oxford City Race win?

Results

For the second time a DrongO group went for a weekend of running and sightseeing in Venice.

James H arrived first on Friday morning and went running. Sarah G and Harriet B joined later and the three went for pizza. Harriet tried to get a pizza and coke deal but found the coke was about the size of a shot glass. Ben W arrived even later from the definitely-not-in-Venice Ryanair airport. Harriet then met the DrongO mascot for the first time but did not appreciate Ben talking to it like it was a person. Our final trip member George arrived in the middle of the night, although unlike Sarah, he did manage to buy a boat ticket to the correct destination from the airport. George was orienteering for the second time ever and maintaining his record of never having orienteered outside Venice.

Our accommodation was a little apartment from AirBnb with a very friendly owner and some bottles of alcohol left there by previous occupants. The crockery was also kept in a cupboard which was a turned off fridge inside.

After a rather rainy Friday evening, Saturday was beautiful sunshine all day. There was time for a bit of tourism which included cat paintings and an airport architecture exhibition. We also discovered that if another DrongO member came who was taller than Ben, they would only be 29 pixels from the top of the image. Then it was on to the first race, which was in a grid-like seaside town, which also sported a shut serial killer museum. Navigation was not that difficult but there were some controls on the beach. James 3rd, 21 seconds behind the winner, with Ben in 4th. Sarah and Harriet were 7th and 14th (not last) in the womens. A local man holding a broom had some fun jumping out at competitors too. George stayed at the accommodation to finish some work, leading to somebody saying his life was s***. Harriet then continued to tell Ben his hair looked ragged and needed a wash, while Ben told Sarah her race pace was probably slower that James's steady pace and George told Sarah she had a dress which looked like fish scales. James somehow avoided this mesh of harsh comments.

After this we had some time to go back to the beach and go swimming, pretty good for November! We also practised running through shallow water since we suspected (falsely, it turned out) that some parts of the course might be mildly flooded. There was then some fun, leading to some excellent photos, trying to put shoes and socks on whilst standing on one leg. We saw possibly the world's smallest dog being walked there as well.

This was followed by the pasta party where we could have as much pasta, cheese and wine as we could, although the wine wasn't so popular since it was only a few hours to the main race. We then got a lift back to the boat stop with the Czech coach (which had about 50 Czechs and 30 Poles on board) and no empty seats, but they nicely let us sit in the corridor on the floor.

Back in Venice we recovered in the apartment for a bit before the main night race in central Venice. Sarah's prediction that George hadn't been outside and had eaten all the Toblerone was close, he hadn't eaten it all but had only eaten Toblerone and bananas all day. By this point Harriet had worked out how to recognise orienteers wandering around the city: if they had a down jacket they were definitely an orienteer.

The race was once again challenging, but different to last year with fewer long legs and more controls. It was tough to think fast enough to make every turn without slowing down. Nobody came last this time. Ben had a good run, and finished 17 seconds down on the winner in 3rd on men's elite. James got a bad stomach part way round and had to slow down, finishising 2 minutes behind in 9th place, but he did win the run in. In the women, Sarah rather consistently finished 7th again, while Harriet improved to 10th. George on Men's A ran the same course, coming 12/16 on his second ever course, but didn't quite manage to beat either of the girls. Next year!

Once everybody finished we ate post race pizza and beer at about 11pm, and George made up for earlier by having about twice as much as anyone else.

The Sunday morning race was further away and we (Ben) hadn't realised that the race transport timetable in the info pack was different to the one he had printed from the internet. As a result we caught a boat, expected a bus to meet us, and there was no bus. This left us with not enough time to get to the race by public transport before the start closed. But by taking two buses then walking (or for James, running) 6km, we would just make it. The huge tourist resort of Jesolo was deserted out of season and taxis were nowhere to be found. We went for it, Harriet carrying her pizza box and George dragging his wheeled case, and made the start 5 minutes before it closed. Harriet even recovered her sense of humour once we had started walking, and we decided that this walk would at least ensure her boyfriend Mark would have no regrets about deciding not to come.

The race had unexpected terrain for a sprint, large parts of it were forested in various shades of green, leading to both Ben and James making some mistakes, finishing 10th and 14th. George tactically started a minute before Sarah, then tried to keep up when she caught him. He did this successfully and even started reading the map in the second part of the course, but didn't manage to pull ahead again despite some valiant attempts. The extra competition possibly helped Sarah to get into 6th place this time, while George was 10th. Harriet navigated pretty cleanly but was outrun and finished 12th, but at least didn't mispunch like the last person on the results.

Our late starts meant that we missed Ben's part of the prize giving for the previous evening, but he got a nice plaque as a prize. Then it was back to Venice for some stiff-legged wandering and (more importantly) eating. On the way Harriet got her best view of the Jesolo waterpark yet, and excitedly made sure the whole bus knew how awesome and exciting the slides looked, and that her ideal day out would be at a waterpark.

After consuming various combinations of pizza, pasta, ice cream, and mulled wine, we headed our separate ways to the airports and George vowed that he was coming back next year. Looks like it's going to have to become annual then!