Hants & Berks Point to Point 2007
 

Hants & Berks MC 50th Pairs ‘Point to Point’ 28th January 2007: The MCAC team of Andy Greenland/Rob Brook and Ann Kolter/John Brook have won this years Point to Point organised by Hants and Berks MC.  Results now available. and more soon but, in the meantime, congratulations to all.

In the meantime, Paul Brown decided that he needed to better last years misdirection on the 'white' and decided to attract the attention of Her Majesties finest by taking John Wilson up the exit slip from the A3!  Over to Paul....

'Well Rob didn’t think I could beat the white road but wasn’t he proved wrong?  We had just started and were approaching the A31 where I wanted to go under it, this required a right turn,  I was busy looking at the map and said to John I wanted to take the next right, John said, "what here?".  And I said yeah without looking up.  When I did look up I saw two lanes of oncoming traffic and nowhere for us to go, we had gone up the slip road for coming off the A31 in the wrong direction, John suggested we should do a three point turn and get off there and half way through the manoeuvre jokingly said that we better be quick before the police arrived. Within ten seconds of that I looked down the A31 to see a big white car with blue lights on the roof driving in the outside lane, about the same time he must have seen us because he quickly swapped lanes and pulled up behind us as we completed the turn.  With the world flashing blue the officer came to my window, I told him it was my fault and he just laughed and said it was quite common.  Thankfully I had the map on my knee so I’m guessing he just saw us as lost tourists. '

Letter from the organiser David Madgwick : -

Dear all

It was a difficult choice to tinker with fifty years of history but I thought the time had come to embrace the technology of the twenty-first century. Traditionally the principle of the Pairs necessitated face-to-face meetings to discuss tactics and resolve the potential map references of the controls. Competitors have for several years had the means to avoid face-to-face meetings by using mobile phones. I'm sure that some must have been tempted to use them so why not change the rules and 'go with the flow'. I was aware that some of the sociability of the 'Pairs' might be lost without the meetings and I attempted to force at least one with the split information given out at the lunch controls. I gather this tactic was fairly successful thus I might try a similar idea on the 51^st Pairs in 2008. Many congratulations to the 2007 winners; team 10 from Middlesex County Auto Club, Andy Greenland and Rob Brook (car A) and Anne Coulter and John Brook (car B), who won by a clear 20 miles on the tie decider.  The attached results are as published with a small amendment that had no effect on the positions. One driver had pressed the reset button on his trip meter at the end of the calibration run and this wasn't noticed until checking.  Seasoned competitor and past organiser Robin Birchall is currently writing some notes on how best to approach the Pairs and this article will follow soon.  See you next year, probably on January Sunday 27^th.

Best regards. David Madgwick