We woke up to quite a change in the weather – cloudy and cold with a stiff breeze blowing up the hill. It seemed silly to drive to an event that was literally less than 500 metres away from our front door, so we walked instead, setting off late in the morning.  We set ourselves up on a small hill with pine forest at our backs, and settled in to watch the juniors racing their hearts out for honours in the Schools Champs.  We had a good view of them charging downhill out of the pine forest, from a ruined stone cottage to the creek, then zigzagging amongst the tall gums hugging the creek bed.

After lunch it was our turn. The organisers had come up with a really frustrating system which involved queuing up to start, ie no pre-allocated start times, and only one runner per course starting at the same time.  With over 100 competitors on my course, this made for a long cold wait.  We all agreed this was crazy, as it was going to take nearly 2 hours to get everyone under way.  Had they split men and women, or used 30 second intervals, they could have cut this down to an hour, and been packed up and on their way home that much sooner.  As it was, courses didn’t close until 4pm.  Mad.

I finally started at 2.30pm, leaving me 90 minutes. Normally this would be ok but with recovering ankle, and a hand that I cant put any pressure on (making any sort of scrambling impossible), I was under time constraints.  We all followed each other for a while along a plantation track, before diving into pine forest. It was clear under foot but the branches were low, reducing visibility.  Luckily there were contour features to use, and I found my first without any trouble.  No 2 was not so easy, but I relocated from a small clearing.

I progressed around the course, enjoying myself albeit at slow careful pace, and found the next 5 controls with no trouble.  I was pushed for time though – I needed to hit no 8 cleanly.  Unfortunately I did anything but; forced to relocate from the creek, I navigated to exactly the right thicket, or so I thought. Every tiny feature matched the map perfectly, except for the fact there was no flag to be seen.  Others were there with me, and we were all befuddled by this turn of events.  As it was getting close to 4pm, I decided to head back in, so it was a mispunch.  I was told afterwards that there was a very similar thicket nearby, which I’d missed.

The next day had a very familiar pattern.  Prepare at leisure, drive for about 5 minutes a bit further down the road, and shiver in a cold wind.  This was Relays day for the schools, normally a showpiece event and a lot of fun to watch.  But you couldn’t see anything!  Poor choice of location and poor planning meant that we only saw the kids as they arrived at the finish punch – no long run-in, no spectator control (unless you shifted several hundred metres away); nothing to see really.  It was all rather disappointing, and lacked the usual excited buzz of a Relay.

Even more so was the terrain. More pine forest, but this time hardly any contours to use to locate the controls, which were frequently on tree root mounds. In pine forest?? My opinion of tree root mounds is that if you have to use them as control sites, you should not be using the map.  Because it was quite steep in places, I made my way quite slowly.  Again, we were under time constraints, and after an hour I still had a way to go, with only 30 minutes up my sleeve.  Unable to face any more tree root mounds, I abandoned the course.  The very nice ladies in the finish tent said that I’d “modified the course to suit myself” which I thought was a great way of putting it; it made me feel much better and put a smile on my face. But overall, the day was a real let-down; more so in terms of the kids.

Today was a very welcome rest day, so we went into tourist mode, and headed for Hahndorf.  Settled by Germans in the 1800s, nowadays it’s a real tourist drawcard, being a short drive from either Adelaide or the Barossa.  I’ve never been there before, at least not on foot.  The sun reappeared, and we parked on the main street and meandered, checking the shops, galleries and cafes.  Almost everything was German, from bratwurst and kranskies to cuckoo clocks.  Authenticity varied; the German Pantry did stock real German foodstuffs that you would find in any supermarket there – but at three times the price.

We opted for lunch in one of the many cafes, and enjoyed our wurst.  Tonight we’re planning a German feast- local Barossa cheese for starters, followed by weisswurst (my favourite) and bratwurst, accompanied by salad.  That will topped off by the biggest apfelstrudel I’ve ever seen, along with leftover beesting cake.  This is what we athletes refer to as carbo loading; some may refer to it as over-indulgence!