Complex Mapping

While Chris spent a day at home with Rosie (and countless household chores), I (Annie) had a fun and silly day. With my great friend Ruth, we took our Triumph and did the "Not the Essex Rally" (in Norfolk).

An early, dark and foggy start to get to Thetford for 9 am, we had a drivers' briefing and some map-plotting time. The rally gives you cryptic clues to your route on a pink OS map, and you have to work out where to go and how to get there. It was our first one, so we entered in beginner class - we weren't competitively scored, and we had a backup map with the route marked on for comparison. 

We managed to mainly follow the clues, and the backup map was only used for double-checking, so we were pretty proud of ourselves. Highlights of the day were:

- The bright sunshine and beautiful sunrise and sunset;
- The tiny "yellow, not white" roads, mainly with grass in the middle - and the SAND road we ended up on;
-  The arm muscle workout of no power steering and sharp bends;
- The police van that gave us a blue-light flash and thumbs up, and the policeman who looked at the car and said "it looks gooood";
- If we had been scored, we would have come 4th (BUT - we had the security of a marked map to check, so not really);
- Now knowing what a herringbone is, and how to work with CRO;
- The many, many giggles we had along the way.

After 4 solid hours of small road navigation and driving, we got to the end pub and had a hard-earned rest.  

Thank you, Ruth - the perfect navigator, and the best fun person to do this first trip with.