Questars - Q2 The Quest Challenge - Exmoor
Wet, wet, wet on Exmoor
Daniel Carrivick (Questars) / 10.05.2012
The second race of the 2012 Questars adventure race series took place in Exmoor on the weekend of the 28 & 29 April. Exceptionally wet weather together with strong winds meant this two-day adventure race called Q2 The Quest Challenge was a bit more challenging than normal, both for those taking part and for The Quest Team organising it. Three inches of rain fell over the weekend (that’s more than the average for the whole month) resulting in flooding, landslips, trees falling down, roads being closed and pheasants dying.
Participants were warned to bring ‘adequate and appropriate wet weather clothing’ as rain had been forecast for late on Saturday overnight into Sunday. However things didn’t get off to a good start when on Friday afternoon a heavy shower turned into a longer period of intense rain causing water to run off over the surface of the event field just before the first participants arrived.
The rain did stop for a while enabling the early arrivals, who were camping, to pitch their tents in the dry, but the ground was already saturated with water and squelchy underfoot in places. Those who arrived later weren’t so lucky as another period of heavy rain set in. They erected their tents in the shelter of the marquee before carrying them outside to pitch them.
Come Saturday morning the rain had stopped. There was no wind and the cloud had dropped, covering the high ground in a thick blanket of fog. After a thorough event briefing, participants got themselves ready to start the first stage.
Stage 1 for Novice participants consisted of a two hour mountain bike stage from Combe Sydenham in the morning. The number of tracks in the forest made navigation quite tricky but this didn’t stop Ben Ball from visiting all but three of the furthest checkpoints to come first in this Novice stage with 345 points.
The Novices then drove over to Wimbleball Lake for Stage 2 that afternoon where they had three hours to visit as many checkpoints on foot and by kayak as possible. Running first, Phil Carrivick and Tom Powell Tuck visited the checkpoints around the lake and on Haddon Hill before paddling to all the kayak checkpoints apart from the two furthest ones at either end of the lake, clocking up an impressive stage winning score of 680 points.
Stage 1 and 2 were combined into one big, long, seven and a half hour stage for Masters participants. They began on bikes, cycling through the fog over to Wimbleball Lake, visiting Mt Bike checkpoints on the way before transitioning to do the kayaking and running. Once Masters participants had finished visiting run and kayak checkpoints they returned to transition to pick up their bikes and cycle back to Combe Sydenham, visiting different Mt Bike checkpoints on the way back.
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