The scatter was also the first event organised by Eamonn Williams and Leslie Mabon, next year’s EUMSC captain and secretary respectively, and confirmed most people’s fears that despite pretending to be a geographer, Leslie cannot work with maps.

Nevertheless, the five competing crews appeared to enjoy flying round a foggy East Lothian in the quest for signs, dates and names, visiting points as diverse as Crichton Church, Raceland and Musselburgh Race Course in an attempt to gain valuable scatter points. Such was the intensity of competition that one navigator actually took it upon himself to write his name on a bridge with a sharpened stone, in the hope of guaranteeing himself a point for correctly answering the question “Whose name is on the bridge?” (However, it should be noted that the event organisers do not in any way condone such wanton acts of vandalism, and thus refused to grant the point).

Although the top three places were filled by experienced crews, perhaps the most impressive performance of the evening came from novice navigator Sam Armstrong, who was reading the maps for Hervé Venries in the BMW 330d. Despite having never competed in a navigational event before, and having to grapple with the organsiers’ challenging and sometimes confusing clues, Sam put in a highly respectable performance, producing a score well in touch with the other teams. Indeed, with more luck at the manned scatter point, Venries and Armstrong could easily have made it into a podium position.

However, as expected for an EUMSC navigational scatter, all was not hard work and intense driving. In a role reversal, Tasha George drove for Steven Campbell in her Ford Ka, and the pair were able to fulfil a year-long ambition by visiting the windmills on the A68. Similarly, the fact that Stuart Hadden was able to plot almost all points correctly on his 1973 OS map speaks volumes for the level of development of the East Lothian road network, although the single white stripe running over the Clerk of the Course’s Mini led many to question whether the council had, in fact, been out re-painting the road markings.

Furthermore, the relaxed atmosphere of the event seemed to spill over onto the crews’ answer sheets, with teams, in true scatter style, guessing the answers for points they did not visit. Whilst providing much amusement for the course officials at marking time, it is regrettable to announce that EH33 6RD is not the postcode for Elvis’s house, “many things” are not happening in Glasgow on the 5th April and that Michael Jackson does not live at East Fortune Airfield. Good try, though – look out for some more of these gems in a forthcoming issue of Write-Off.

As Gary Linekar has explained countless times, ‘at the end of the day, there can only be one winner,’ and it was the Anderson/Leeming partnership that finished with the highest number of points and filled their Proton MPi with a pile of EUMSC goodies for the journey home. More importantly, however, all the crews were able to enhance their driving skills and local knowledge (very useful for future EUMSC events), and Eamonn and Leslie gained valuable experience in event organisation. Now, if only Mr. Mabon would stop using his poti as an aerial stand, he might be able to produce accurate clues…

Mid-March Madness 2005 – Results

1. Stewart Anderson/Ewan Leeming (Proton MPi) 42 points
2. Harry Elwin/Oly McCollum (Volvo 940) 39 points
3. Tasha George/Steven Campbell (Ford Ka) 38 points
4. Stuart Hadden/Euan Brodie (LandRover Discovery) 32 points
5. Hervé Venries/Sam Armstrong (BMW 330d) 27 points.
 

Updated 21st March 2005
Webmaster - Jim Paterson