This was one of the few events I’ve done South-East of London – the map is near Tunbridge Wells. I did the Brown course, which at 8.5km and 215m climb was one of the harder Browns. I really did manage to mess this one up, making numerous errors, particularly legs 5, 6, 12, 14, 19 and 21 (I made many other smaller errors too – this was not a great technical run on my part!)
Leg 5-6 can (just) be seen in the second extract below. My mistake here was to optmistically plunge into the “Undergrowth walk” just south of control 5. For January, this was pretty overgrown. I out of it eventually, only to get stuck on more vegetation just south of the stream. 3-4 was an interesting one, too – the cliff just to the north was huge, and I approached the 4th control having gone down the wrong path and on the “blind” side of the cliff. The first extract shows some later controls – I made a big (>5 minute) mistake coming to number 19, missed the control and went rushing up the path to the east, only realising what I’d done when I came to the steep earth bank beside the path, 500m down. 21 also was tough – a “bingo” control in featureless, poor visibility terrain – I hit the road behind the control and had to relocate.
My time in the end was 91:16, a disappointing 10.7 mins/km. The winner did 64:16 though (7.6 mins/km) so it wasn’t the quickest of areas for South England!
This was the first Pembury Walks event for 25 years – the area, an RSPB reserve, used to be regularly used until a bypass was built right through the heart. The course necessitated a hair-raising (but untimed) cross of the dual carriageway at one end, and a long, tedious and unpleasant crossing by a long-winded bridge at the other end – made worse as it dropped you into an uninteresting part of the map. Without the bypass, this would be a nice area indeed. The northern-most part is flat and fast, and there is a nice heathery/open section right in the middle of the map that felt more Yorkshire for a moment than Kent.
One thing to note though – this event was in early January, when you would normally expect vegetation to be at its lowest. But there was a lot of vegetation out there, some of it very unpleasant. Any other time of the year, this map would probably be too overgrown to have an event on.
This was a well attended local event, the local was just down the road from the excellent Bagshot Heath map. My last event however was back in October, so I wasn’t too suprised to get a fairly slow time (it was sub 9mins/km, but the winner did sub 7mins/km.)
I almost missed this event, missing a train connection. I made it half an hour after the start closed, having to do a “DIY” start in the end. My glasses also fell apart during the rush at the start (I now wear contacts) which somewhat hindered my progress through the forest – the main issue was I couldn’t see undergrowth directly in front and so frequently ended up impaled on the local flora.
Another epic bike/train/bike trip to get to the start of this one – made more interesting by the railway station being a good 150m below the event start. Trosley Country Park is a lot like Shotover Park, an area in Oxford I’ve been many times. The sharp drop at the edge of the North Downs dominates the whole area, with the flat, wooded section in the north abruptly halted by the steep, 100m drop down in open countryside. 
This was a bit of an epic to get to, tucked between the South Downs and the Channel, near lovely Arundel, My epic relay of a bike ride to Victoria, a 90 minute train journey, and another four mile bike ride, got me warmed up, but I twisted my back just as I was coming down the last hill to the event site. It was the usual back pain problem, in the same place as before. So I had to sit it out – I bought some proper O-shoes, finally, for the season, while I was there. By all accounts it was a tougher area than the map looked, particularly the Nore Hill section which had some interesting looking earth features (I didn’t see them as I wasn’t walking anywhere.) The prospect of a long journey back with a bad back making movement difficult, was initially very daunting, but in the end it wasn’t that bad, and I was back running in a few days.
This was not a classic map by any means, but was a nice enough jaunt around the campus and fields and woodland surrounding BCUC (Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University College.) I did Green (the longest course available) and went around it pretty fast, recording a time comfortably under my 8mins/km target, but Rob Palmer beat me soundly, running 20% faster and finishing just over 6 mins/km.