Organised by Chris Plummer

By popular request this year's post Christmas exercise event was moved firstly to the Saturday 27th. and then to the afternoon starting at 13:00. This evidently did not improve the attendance as only Chris Heys and Dave Chippendale turned up at the start on Tegg's Nose.

But first to go back to the organisers thinking. This year, at least the day before (Boxing Day) was clear and warm for the time of year and there was no snow laying at Chris's place on the 1000' level in the Staffordshire Moors, so having been hidden in various cars over previous years, Chris decided to hide properly in the woods (there is a lot of that in Macclesfield Forest). Thus about 11:00 on the day Chris and Clive ventured into the woods. Surprise there was a wet layer of snow lying in the Cheshire woods near Langley, but Chris decided still to venture to the woods as it seemed to be turning to rain. WRONG... Clive dropped Chris 80 minutes before the start time, and having been given directions and an OS map with instructions Clive then got severely lost getting to Teggs Nose, in fact rather than taking every left turn he came to, he must have turned right somewhere, because he must have driven over High Edge to end up on the Leek-Buxton road and came back on the correct road passing by the Cat & Fiddle pub on his right, ie on his way back from Buxton towards Macclesfield (nasty road that in fog and snow with local loonies close to his rear bumper). Eventually, but just in time Clive arrived at the start (just 1.5 miles as the crow flies from the TX location), to be greeted by a blizzard and only the two competitors.

When time came to transmit the DFers decided that 3/4 hour would be enough to find Chris and still get lunch in the pub. As it turned out neither of them were near the site let alone the hidden station by the time the event was called off, even though they used their cars to get off the Nose. Chris had put in the effort to put it on and got wet and cold in the process, so he won't tell them exactly where he was (use that one another year). A shame really, as Chris's footprints in the snow when getting to the site and putting up the aerial, were nicely covered by the time the hunters would have got close. Once the aerial was taken down and Chris emerged from the woods he found one competitor very confused in the car park, having found a closed footpath sign, not realising that Chris had not used that footpath; and one sitting in his car outside the Pub, (Nerve).

A good repast was well received in the Leathern Smithy (the local country style pub with roaring fires to thaw Chris's hands before he could attack his meal) and all went home full of cheer, warm and dry, to sleep it off later.

Chris Plummer

Dave Chippendale

DNF

Chris Heys

DNF

Everyone else

DNC