Sand and Sunshine

842Our accommodation has a wonderful view over Saunton Sands and Braunton Burrows which meant that we didn’t have far to travel to today’s event. I drove Christine down for her run and took Emma around the string course. Emma enjoyed running up and down the dunes so much that we had to collect all of the off-string controls (although the walk to and from the start was a bit much for her, particularly with all the puddles to jump in). The enjoyment was increased by the copious amounts of sunshine! There were 4 hours between split starts so I could drive everyone back to the cottage, have lunch, and then drive back for my run!

As my GPS track shows, I failed to make the most of a child free preparation to my run and ended up returning to the start kite before eventually locating the first control! That put me 5 minutes behind the leaders and I never really recovered. I struggled to interpret the complex contour detail on the 1:15,000 map and always felt myself lucky if I did hit a control spot on. I was 7th on the day but 8 minutes behind the leader which put me 8th over the two days. Others in our accomdation faired much better with Christine 3rd on W21S, Mark 2nd on M50L and Alice winning W50L.

On my return, the Easter bunny had visited our garden and Emma enjoyed hunting out the chocolate eggs, even if she couldn’t seem to see them even when they were right in front of her face!

One Response to “Sand and Sunshine”

  1. Christine says:

    Emma’s egg-hunting ability certainly doesn’t bode well for her future orienteering career!