I often can't resist hiding in or around Clifton Country Park, but this time I thought I would throw everyone off the scent by having the start bearing go through it, but hide at Bradley Fold near Little Lever, some 3 miles north of Clifton Country Park.  Unfortunately though, I worked out my approximate bearing using an old 180° protractor, which with the 'HELIX' logo horizontal, had 90° at the top and I wrote down 88° instead of 358°.  Oh dear.  Only Dave Holland heard me at the start, and therefore the approximate was given out to the remaining teams.  Dave Chip and Roger thus set off for Broadbottom!  Meanwhile Dave Holland who had taken an impressively accurate bearing of around 343° and was sure his set wasn't lying, encouraged John Heath to phone me and ask for clarification of the approximate, and thus I realised my mistake!  A few frantic phone calls later and we had Roger and Dave Chip back on track, doing an anticlockwise sweep around the M60 to get them "north" of the start!

I had spent a couple of hours surveying the area the day before and had decided where to hide, but on the day I had not banked on just how thick the brambles were, and this made it difficult to walk around getting much aerial wire up.  I did however manage to lob some up the tree adjacent to my hide three times and this gave a reasonable signal.  Dave Holland was first on site at about 11:15 on my 4th transmission.  He just failed to spot me by the end of this transmission and I cruelly made him scratch around for nearly 15 minutes until the next transmission.  During this time he wandered around to the opposite side of the stream and when I came on air again he soon spotted me.

Before Dave H could make himself scarce, Dave Chip was soon upon us, having been lead in by the same transmission and he spotted me when I was off air.  John Heath was also in the area by now, but it was the next transmission that brought him in.  John managed to find the most difficult way into the site.  Such were the ferocity of the brambles he took a while to fight his way in and I had to correct the time he got in by 2 minutes as I had written it down too soon.

Encouraged by more transmissions, Roger was soon in the area and looking down his DF set pointing towards the signal from the TX, he spotted my blue hat from afar!

The pub was the Red Bridge, chosen simply by looking for the nearest PH on the map, and it didn't disappoint.  Full marks for it's extremely hot and spicy soup, and thumbs up also for the Roger's sponge pudding (I was too full after my starter and main course).  It was fairly quiet in the pub, but Donna and Dave Peacock with Megan and Adam in tow soon put amends to that when they joined us for the pub meal.  Dave P unfortunately wasn't up to doing the DF, with having a bad throat and chest to contend with.  So with Dave P's points total frozen for this month, Dave Holland now takes the lead in the series table and it's all to play for.