There was quite a good turnout for this event on a beautiful summers evening. The station was located to the south of Reading on an old railway embankment. The area is very low-lying and floods regularly from the network of rivers and streams in the area. There are also some working railway lines. There were at least three ways in, from the north, south and west. Careful map reading was needed to find the optimum routes, mistakes being hard to correct and resulting in long detours.

I was sad to see that only three competitors found the site. There were many excuses, the most common being how hard it is to get across the river Thames in Reading. There are only two bridges, the nearest others being at Pangbourne and Sonning.

To be fair, the area was quite difficult to navigate around. In fact, when I went to the site I took a different route from when I set it up and got lost. I had to retrace my steps and lost about 40 minutes.

Bill Pechey