Earn your dinner

Strange "thump-thump-thump" emanating from the woods over the South Downs. It was me, charging about in the undergrowth doing some orienteering. I did a 6.3km course with lots of hills. Bear in mind that the 6.3km refers to the distance in straight lines between the markers, and excludes:

1. detours around obstacles - sheer cliffs and the like
2. taking the safe route (i.e. sticking to a long route via a track, rather than charging across country)
3. headless chicken moments, of which there are many

so it actually works out at much longer. Felt like 10,000,000 miles. Even so, I don't think my time of 1hr 53 will set any course records.

****

In fact, I've just checked the results (http://www.londonorienteering.co.uk/) and I came a frankly embarrassing 99th out of 121 competitors. The winner did 47 minutes, and I was beaten by no less than 16 pensioners. However, there are two points to note:

• These are MAD pensioners, not normal ones (skinny legs, wild-eyed stares, muttering to themselves, have done the course at least 40 times before and-this-one-quite-frankly wasn't-a-patch-on-the-one-in-1974-my-dear)
• I beat Glenn and Mick. That's all that counts.