Manchester Quad Night events seem to produce memorable occurrences, 1993 could not be failed for that. Chris Plummer had recruited Dave Bolton as a navigator and took his Son Matthew and Matts girl friend as beaters on the event. Everyone in the car load except Stella was experienced in DF’s, but Dave forgot to bring a change of clothes, and turned out in walking boots, gardening trousers, and a beautiful white Arran sweater. The third station that they went to was located near the back fence of Partington Oil works, down by an old railway, but that was not the worst of it. They found aerial wire looped up along the railway track side of a small trickle of a stream, and were tempted to cross the stream that ran along side the railway banking. As Chris crossed the tussocky stream bed, he called out to Dave, ‘It’s alright if you are caref... (splash from Daves vicinity) .. ful’. Neddy Seagoon comes to mind "Oh, look, He’s fallen in the water!!’ Dave had tried crossing at a wider part of the stream and missed his footing on the tussocks. He fell into about 4’ of water, but that was not the end of it, the water was also the outfall of the oil works and was mostly finely divided oily rust. Thus Dave got a rusty brown tide mark on his beautiful white sweater, but he also had the map in his hand, this also got covered with oily rust. (Even when Chris washed and ironed the map, it was a write off, all brown and wrinkled, rather like Dave really) With no change of clothes Dave had to steam in the car as Chris raced up the M63/62 to the last station as below."

Dave suggested Worsley Courthouse turn, but this was too near the bearing, the time was 10:57pm. Chris decided to make it further up the motorway, but Swinton turn was access only, so they sped on into ‘Death’ valley. ‘How far to the Prestwich turn Dave?’ asked Chris, now going uphill in the SRi at 130mph..., Dave replied from behind hands held tight over his eyes, ‘Don’t know, but we had better start braking now’ (What ?? only 1.5 miles to go to the turn) Chris made the junction whilst the 11:00pm transmission was still on, AND got a bearing (from the hard shoulder of the slip road). ‘Whats that smell?’ asked Matt as he held the torch. ‘ Shut up it must be the brakes’ said his Dad. It was then that things went from bad to worse, as Dave steamed and whimpered in the passenger seat. Chris again took to the M62 back towards Swinton, only to find he had overshot the site and returned through ‘Death’ valley to Prestwich. Approaching the site from round the back of the local loony-bin (appropriate really, they let them out at night sometimes, evidence was the crowd of DFers around there.) On the way in on foot, on a crisp early March night, there was crunching under foot. The crunching was from the carpet of frogs being crushed under our boots. There were piles of Frogs everywhere, as the whole of the local male frog populace appeared to want to mate with the few females that were about. Each female was buried under a pile of 10 or 12 males. Having negotiated this hazard around the pools at the bottom of the hill, they eventually found the TX and crew hidden up the hill behind the local graveyard!!!!