Five teams braved this rather wet evening DF event which had John Champion running the event due to Bob Gray's injured arm.

With slight drizzle at 7.30, all teams heard John with most plotting a bearing of circa 10 degrees. As we left the start, a massive cloudburst came down, which made most teams take off across the map towards the Beaconsfield area. Well almost, as Bill Pechey did not receive the info that the bypass was chock-a-block up to High Wycombe, and still in a large queue at the 8pm signal, decided to open the sun roof to see if he could hear John. To his surprise, the signal was extremely strong and he quickly shut the roof up again to avoid wet feet.

I (with Bob Gray as navigator) arrived in a small picnic area near Holtspur only to see Alan Simmons and Steve Stone arrive as well. The signal here was weaker than Bill's but gave us a bearing towards Horton Wood just above Little Marlow. We decided to drive straight towards this wood and on our descent towards the wood came across Bill who was going up to the main road to make sure of his large signal whilst queueing!

Also there was Mr. X's sidekick (John Mullins) who made great effort on actually getting into the wood where John was hiding. We, in the meantime, found John's car parked nearby and proceeded to thrash the brambles and fallen trees in the suspect area. With the next signal on, we actually DFed right down to the fence which John had connected to, and with some frantic searching, found (drowned rat) John hiding under a small umbrella. Steve Stone, who had been down to the road junction earlier, decided to run from Flackwell Heath (well fit) to find John. ("Thank God," he thought, "let's go to the pub.")

Thanks again to John for stepping in at the last moment.

Brian Bristow