Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st December

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Going Underground
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Going Underground »

Iain wrote:Are we meeting up outside the gateline or on the plarform?
If its raining as forecast I will be in the waiting room on the platform for a few minutes...
We will all have to go outside and start watch / take photo at some time anway
tractakid wrote:I can make it on the off peak- as long as there are no delays. Shame there are no Virgin returns from Euston after 20:23 which means I'll need to pay extra for a return valid on London Midland too.

Is there a timeframe for starting the watch? If I only make it to Wimbledon Park for 11:10, for example, due to delays, will I be able to start on a later District train?
I am planning to leave on the 11:10 but you can go later if need be, its not a mass start so you can leave anytime within reason, say 1/2 hour or so we finish /meet up later within reasonable time of each other...
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tractakid »

*pandiculates*

Good morning. Why am I doing this? :P

Good luck all.
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Going Underground »

tractakid wrote:*pandiculates*

Good morning. Why am I doing this? :P

Good luck all.
I am thinking exactly that myself, always seems like a good idea until I wake up on the actual day.... :roll:

This is worse than a full network I have 5 nasty runs and all the exiting of stations adds to the pain....
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Sam »

Hope you all had fun, the weather looked just PERFECT for it :)
:D First and so far only female solo record holder!! :D

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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tractakid »

Completed in 7:50:08
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Going Underground »

tractakid wrote:Completed in 7:50:08
Finishing at Elm Park on same train as Joy 54 and Going Underground 7:47:05
And Greatkingrat 7:59:20

Apologies for the chaos at the end

Horse & Groom, Champion, Blue Posts and Angel all closed, The Chandos was open but very busy and they wanted double price for drinks :o

I didn't realise there was more than one McD's within a stones throw of Leics Sq and that half the world would also be there at the same time...

Thanks for taking part and a Happy New Year to all :D :P
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tangy »

I guess I bring up the rear with my 08:25:01 time finishing at Moor Park
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This is a Central line train to "Woodford via Hainault"- sadly, not no more!

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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Going Underground »

tangy wrote:I guess I bring up the rear with my 08:25:01 time finishing at Moor Park
Still one time to come yet, you never know!
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tractakid »

tangy wrote:I guess I bring up the rear with my 08:25:01 time finishing at Moor Park
I KNEW you'd finish at Moor Park! :P
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tangy »

tractakid wrote:
I KNEW you'd finish at Moor Park! :P
I guarantee you would not guess my route! Could have been 15 minutes faster if it wasn't for an 8 minute wait at Newbury Park which put paid to the Leytonstone NLL connection....
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tractakid »

What was your route?
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Iain »

9:10:41 so we bring up the rear - we did have a theoretical time very close to the majority at just under eight hours.

Myles and I were discussing at the start whether our unorthodox departure back to Wimbledon might turn out to parallel Richie in the Zone one earlier in the year when he went into zone two. It turns out it actually went quite well - we narrowly missed one train there but only had to wait about 60-90 seconds. We changed again at Clapham Junction - this caused a slight problem as we went straight to the usual platform 14 for a Victoria that I've used over the last few decades for work. Sad to sad after about five minutes we realised that the platform was closed and that Victoria trains had been re-routed to platform 12. All went smoothly until we arrived at Victoria when the doors wouldn't open for about three minutes, and then nothing came on the Circle line for about ten minutes, although we did bump into Tractakid there.

After that we took out the central stations before heading out to Holland Park where my camera jammed wasting several minutes and then White City - sadly we'd dropped quite a bit of time by now and had a fair wait at Wood Lane. Ravenscourt Park worked well, and our gamble of running for a bus to try and avoid 9-10 minute waits after we'd dashed out to get pictures at Ravenscourt and Chiswick Park. We were no worse off though. We ticked off Park Royal and headed up to take Moor Park out when Myles (who's from that part of the network) suggested an H12 bus to Pinner. We missed one by five seconds at South Harrow so opted for an H10 five minutes behind, then swapped to an H12 we bumped into en route. Sadly I think this ended up losing us time, so all in all we were about an hour down by the time we bumped into Tractakid again at Wembley Park.

We successfully got Canons Park and headed back to Wembley again to bus it over to the Bakerloo. Success! A 297 was at the stop and we stopped traffic crossing the road. When I scouted this a week or two ago the bus took under ten minutes but this time we got stuck at light for 10-15 minutes on its own! Running into the station a women stepped out in front of me, I swerved out in front of a bus to avoid her and got a soggy foot in a puddle. I heard a shout of abuse from behind but assumed it was for Myles as I hadn't actually made contact with the woman. Myles later told me she'd dropped her phone in the puddle, although I'm still not clear how it was my fault.

The next few stations went okay, although Myles and I lost each other wasting a train or two, plus a Northern line DMI showed the wrong destination leading to an annoying change at Camden. We'd been pleased as we'd had probably our best change all day and this spoilt it. We polished off the Northern stations, then caught the bus to Finsbury Park. We decided to head over to the Central via H&I and just missed an overground by ten seconds, in part due to me misreading the door position, so we had a nine minute wait. We did the remaining stations in a predictible order, but District trains were scarce adding even more to our time.
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by Going Underground »

We had a nightmare start, late into NHG after being held outside for a few mins we missed our Central Line to Holland Park and this meant we only had under 8 mins for the ghastly run to Ladbroke Grove approaching the bridge as our train pulled away :(
A nice 10 min wait here and we ran out of Westbourne Park to see a 31 bus pull away and with 5 mins on the board we ran all bar the last couple of bus stops to Kilburn Park before catching the 328 the remainder of the way....
As we ran to the platform a train pulled away and was 7 min wait for the next Bakerloo :(

But then luck changed and from being 20 mins down on our projected time of 8hrs 10min we made train and buses with split seconds to spare and by the time we got to Belsize Park we were back on the predicted time...
Then our fortune held with some more slick changes another great bus and we eventually finished half an hour inside our estimation.... :shock:

Just goes to show the ups and downs of this monster of a challenge as we were seriously thinking of a very early abortion :!:

Final placings
5th Myles and Iain 9:10:41 at Elm Park
4th Martin 08:25:01 at Moor Park
3rd Peter 7:59:20 at Elm Park
2nd Andrew 7:50:08 at Elm Park (left and finished on same train as winning team but started watch / took photo a tadge early :wink: )
1st Steven and Kevin 7:47:05 at Elm Park
Last edited by Going Underground on 31 Dec 2012, 23:55, edited 1 time in total.
Twice former full network GWR holder and former Zone 1 Olympic and World Record holder with The Raven and Soupie
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Twice Winter Olympic Biathlon Gold Medalist with The Beer Baron
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tractakid
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by tractakid »

Now I must ask the question, starting and finishing on the same train as the winning team, why did I not wait a little longer to start my stopwatch?
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Re: Christmas Park Challenge 2012 - Wimbledon Park 31st Dece

Post by joy54 »

Had a very good return to tube challenging and a great catch up with Kev going round.

Was pretty dejected at the beginning with the catalogue of bad changes we had, especially after the run from Westbourne to Kilburn Park where I hopelessly chased a 31 and then we arrived to that 7 minute Bakerloo line wait. But after that everything just clicked, we made sexy change after sexy change and it felt like the old days all over again. Had some of the best connections I've ever had on a Park Challenge with some of the link ups working magnificently!

What also struck me though was how much technology now plays into our hands. It was so easy to just check the Tube/NR Departure Boards and Bus Countdown that it almost felt like cheating some of the time.

But anyway nice to see some old faces again and I hope everyone had a great day.
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