Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Let us know about your latest FULL NETWORK CHALLENGE efforts
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Bambography
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Joined: 12 Jul 2008, 11:10

Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by Bambography »

Well, Hello!

We've been watching this forum with interest over the last couple of weeks as we built up to a All Stations attempt on the 10th July. We were especially keeping an eye open on Tuesday...

Firstly, well done on setting the new record, 17 seconds isn't much, but it all adds up.

As for our attempt. Well, our main goal was raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, over £1100 + gift aid at the moment. All in memory of my Brother - dreadfully missed!
Our secondary plan was to take the world record. This is our second go at the challenge, 1st time wasn't a record attempt, but another fundraiser 3 years ago.
This time we registered properly and sat down to plan with the maps. In total about 7 notebooks full of potential routes, complete yet slow routes, and otherwise impossible combinations were thrashed out before we finally got the route we were to play with. Our route was always going to be tight coming in about 11 mins under the record however there were some generous changes & runs as we're not the fittest. It was possible, we'd give it a shot and whatever happened get as far as we could - fundraisers in mind!

So to Amersham and off on the usual train. All going nicely, to Chesham & Back, then after station 5 we stopped. "Theres a tree on the line between Rickmansworth and Moor Park" came the announcement. Typical! Well, after that we ended up 20mins down after just 6 stations but we battled on. We made a few great connections and were clawing back the time until we missed a cruel link at Stanmore, watching the doors close right in front of us. From there it was downhill, slowly getting further behind but still having fun!
In the end we missed a vital 'every 30mins' link which made us 1hr out. The record had gone, but there were generous people out there and we owed the rest of the day to them. We had to do some quick thinking from time to time, realising that the Victoria line was going to shut before we got there we re-routed to complete it prior to closure and various other minor changes.
Sadly in the end we were running out of time. On our attempt 3 years ago we managed to visit 260/275 stations and just wanted to beat that, and also to have visited all of the stations (between the two attempts). With the clock ticking as we headed out towards Epping we realised that the last train to T5 (and our awaiting support crew) was going to be too tight so we hopped off at Woodford and did the loop instead (missing the top 5 of the central line). The rest of the route went just as planned except by this time T4 was also out of the window. So straight through to T5 it was and after 18hrs 43mins and 18secs we hoped off the train into the shiny new station. So we missed 6 stations, but we have now been to all of the available stations which is something, to us at least. Engineering, closures and signals all behaved for us and when they did occur they were well away from where we were so if it wasn't for that blooming tree it would have been an interesting day!

High points of the day:
Running out of North Harrow station to find our plan & support crew working perfectly to press the crossing button at exactly the right time.
The fantastic people that gave witness statements! People DO talk on the tube and all were interested and enthusiastic about our challenge.
The bus driver at edgware for waiting.
Running out of Goodge Street and finding they were handing out Cadburys Triffles. At full pelt I grabbed one shouting "AH GENIUS, THANKS!" as we ran. Looking at each other and saying oh, no spoons, we ran into another group handing out more "Do you have spoons I shouted", 'Yes', "Great Thanks" - all at full pelt!
The series of amazing connections we made throughout the evening.

Low Points:
The tree....
Missing those cruel links where they depart right in front of your eyes.

Thanks to those that donated to a worth cause in memory of a top brother! Thanks to Mum, Ellie & Lydia for the days support - I know you enjoyed it too! And good luck to those attempting this record in the future, it is certainly not something easy to do!!
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Root
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Re: Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by Root »

Congratulations on raising so much money, commiserations on not getting the record or making it all the way round.

Do you think you'll have another go in future? And if it something that you enjoy doing, would you consider doing any of the minor challenges?
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palkanetoijala31

Re: Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by palkanetoijala31 »

Congratulations as well A tree on the track between Rickmansworth and Moor Park that must be one of the worst things that could happen to any tube challengers and totally unadvoidable.A few questions how big was ur support team?And what was ur best part of the day apart for the cadbury trifles?.
Bambography
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Re: Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by Bambography »

Root wrote:Congratulations on raising so much money, commiserations on not getting the record or making it all the way round.
Do you think you'll have another go in future? And if it something that you enjoy doing, would you consider doing any of the minor challenges?
Thank You, and I don't know. My partner, and route master, lives in Manchester so its quite a trip for him to come down for the challenge. The fact that the route is doable and under the (current) record makes us fancy another shot but time and days off probably won't allow that for a while.

palkanetoijala31 wrote:Congratulations as well A tree on the track between Rickmansworth and Moor Park that must be one of the worst things that could happen to any tube challengers and totally unadvoidable.A few questions how big was ur support team?And what was ur best part of the day apart for the cadbury trifles?.
It was so disheartening to get that far back so early. As I say the main reason for doing it was to raise money but i'd have been great to have a shot of the record beyond 6am!
Support team was just Mum, Ellie & Lydia (my 2 cousins). I'm sure a bigger team would have helped, especially where we had a tight connection and saw the doors on the opposite platform shut as ours started to open. They did a sterling job however of getting everywhere we asked them to be and feeding various bits of information back to us.
Best part of the day, well, we really did enjoy the whole day! The highlights were the crossing at North Harrow, I'm not sure what everyone else thought but it was a work of art watching the lights change as we left the station. Great piece of timing. Also the series of connections we made for about 2 hrs after Wimbledon in the evening. It all went so well we felt great.
jbom1

Re: Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by jbom1 »

Well done, that sounds like a really good day's work in a great cause.
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jonny
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Re: Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by jonny »

Congratulations on raising so much money.

If you would like me to add your time to the table on http://www.jonnylyon.net/tubechallenge, then please send me your names either via PM, or by replying in this thread (Whichever you would prefer).

Well done

Jonny
Bambography
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Re: Hello from some Newbie Challengers!

Post by Bambography »

Yeah, why not. Although sadly we'll be resident in the incomplete section.
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