R15 Championship 2012/13: Round 1

[Iain]

I paired up with Mr X *cough*Myles*cough* which seemed like a plan as it looked like it could be a long run and some company was always good. We took our time once the envelope was opened, marking the stations on the map and then deciding on a route. As it turned out this didn't cost us anything as we had a two or three minute wait for a train west. We were the only team who decided not to finish at Fairlop, opting for Alperton instead. Our thinking was that the stations out towards Harrow would take longer to get back from than Fairlop. I'm not sure in practice if that was the case.

We had generally good connections all through, I just think we picked a bad route, although I can't see where we lost over an hour to the other teams!

Our first train was an H&C, but rather than switching at Edgware Road we continued round to Hammersmith. This of course took time which I guess you avoided by doing ALperton mid route. From there to Earl's Court and down to East Putney, and then a run to Putney overground where we saw Glen going in the opposite direction. The next few stations we did in a similar way to others, going across the south of the map via Vauxhall, Pimlico, and Lambeth North. I'd craftily written the time of loop trains onto my map, and we figured we could double back to Goodge Street and hopefully get one. Looking back we didn't really need a WVH as we were only going to Fairlop! We did still have Bow Road to do, but we were still a bit fixated on our WVH train so delayed it until later. This may not have been too bad as we either had to come back this way into central London or go from Snaresbrook or Leytonstone over to the Vic and then up for Manor House.

Now to the top of the map - we decided to go up to the top of the Picc and use buses we knew rather than try transferring to the Northern lower down and do a double back from Kentish Town. We toyed with Manor House to Harringay Green Lanes, passing the shop called "Hot Nuts", but decided using a 07 bus was better. We thought Tangy with his encyclopaedic bus knowledge had an advantage on us here.

The bus turned up nicely, so we took out the Northern line stations, then used NR and OG trains to get us to Willesden junction. At this point we had a ton of rugby fans who'd invaded for the day. Then up to Kenton to transfer to Northwick Park and the Met, across to Rayners where we made a sexy (but very slippery) change to a train heading down the Picc to kill off the last two stations. Sadly we ran out of time so only got fourteen stations in the time allowed.

[Starkey7]

heading up to north Wembley i got out of the station prepared to run towards Sudbury Hill with the bus as a back up i decided it was too much of a risk and returned back into the station as the bus was arriving at north wembley we doubled back to Wembley Central as we ran out towards Sudbury Town via a nice bus that was waiting to take us there so running was negated.

And that's a good thing, because that route is extremely hilly; you would not have enjoyed doing that on foot!

[Rhys1995]

I've literally just come back from France today to find you guys have started the R15, hope you all had a great day and I'm 99% certain I'm'a be in the UK when the next round begins

[Nigel]

I don't know if there were still going to be bonus points for anyone who saw me on Saturday, but I can confirm that I didn't spot any R15 competitors.

[Going Underground]

No I didn't spot Nigel either....

[Steeevooo]

But were you making plans for Nigel?