After a quarter of a century the Handicap went back to Arnside Knott. There had been access problems for many years but Alex Finch had sorted these out and had produced a new map of the area. As so often with the Handicap we were lucky with the weather and the parking field, which two days earlier had been under two inches of water, was relatively dry and firm.

Arnside Knott is a public area and from the outset we were concerned that control security might be a problem. For the last couple of years we have used a Norwegian course with a small map at each control giving the location of the next one. Clearly the loss of any control in the sequence would wreck the whole event so we could not risk this on an area where controls might go missing.

Registration on a fantastic January day.  Arnside Knott in the background.

We reverted to a simple score event where the handicapping took the form of requiring different people to find differing numbers of controls. One difference this year is that whilst many competitors claim broken limbs in an attempt to get an easier handicap, it was actually true in the cases of Mary Wheeler and Frances Watkins, the latter hobbling round part of the course on sticks. Alex had put all the controls out before we set up Registration at one o'clock and led the climb up to the Start an hour later. The marker which he had put out to indicate the start triangle had gone, which did not bode well for the rest of the marker kites. I blew the whistle and about 55 people ran off in assorted directions. We set up the Finish and waited.

The Mass Start - "and they're off!"

Alex had provided me with data which I hoped meant that my handicapping would produce a winner in about 30 minutes. At the half hour nobody was in sight but a couple of minutes later three runners appeared in the distance. Quentin Harding was first home, closely followed by Malik Devlin and Becca Roberts. Two of the 21 controls had disappeared. Including these two, Quentin had actually found 22 controls, having additionally found one that Alex had lost when putting them out. For the first time as Handicapper I couldn't be accused of giving the winner too few controls to find ! Eventually everyone made it back and we set off for the Social and Prizegiving at the Village Hall in Silverdale.

As usual there was food and drink, a raffle and a quiz and the various prizes were awarded to the winners of the Galoppen and Club League. The National and Provincial Prize for contributions to the work of the Club went to John Denmark and the overall Women's and Men's trophies were won by Frances and Tim Watkins.

 Sprinting to the finish, whilst others review their performance