It was the first SOC street event of the winter tonight. As usual, Richard Jeans had drawn up a map of Lyndhurst with fire hydrants, street lamps and post boxes as controls. I set off North out of the town centre and made the mistake of spending too long picking off the low scoring controls on the way out. My LED Petzl was fading and it was proving difficult to find some of the hydrants in the dark.
I passed Mike Yeo running in the opposite direction after about half an hour. I knew Mike had only been to the controls far out at Bank so decided that I wouldn’t go out there. Instead, I tried to get as many of the medium scoring controls on the outskirts of Lyndhurst. This strategy seemed to pay off and, returning with about a minute to go, I had managed all but six of the controls.