Unfortunately, where we live there are not many scatters run locally, so with an event being run on the Thursday of the Easter weekend and a Bank Holiday Friday for a lie in, we headed to Kent after work. Matt had asked me to navigate for him and with the map arriving on the day of the event, we were good to go!
Prepping the map on the way to the start probably wasn’t a good idea judging by the car sickness I felt when we arrived, but after some dinner I started to feel better and it was then time to start the event. The map references all had to be calculated from other numbers given which threw me slightly to start with, but then I started plotting and had a route down. The idea of a scatter is you are given a number of points to visit where you have to find answers to questions, but you have to plot the points and you have to figure out the route.
We got something down, and then it was time to head off. We found the first few clues ok but then we started to struggle. We’d stop and check we had calculated the grid reference correctly (we had), re-plotted to check I’d done it accurately (we had) and then we’d continue if we were still stuck. We ended up visiting more points than we had answers for, where we didn’t find them all, and made it back to the pub a little early having struggled with a couple of later clues. We finished 4th (we had been 3rd but post event scores were re-checked) by 5 points, so just one additional answer would have made a difference for us in overall placings. A 1am walk through the front door was a late one, but it was worth the trip down to do our first scatter, with me on the map, in a while.
Suze Endean 