It is Monday and suddenly I seem to have less interest in the weather forecast. As suggested by a team leader earlier today "we woz lucky". During the last week, we all remained convinced that the car park field would cope despite the snow, ice and rain. Come Friday and Saturday, I was getting more and more worried and sleeping less and less each night.

Plan A was to get everyone into the field, we used plan B, plan C involved buses from several areas of hard standing in local villages. Some will say that our mistake was to not to adopt plan C early in the week. As conditions worsened, it became impossible to revert to that plan. Others will say it was a better event since we could not use buses - I agree but Alastair and I can tell you all about the heartache it caused.

So plan B it had to be. With the terrible conditions on Saturday and gales forecast for Sunday, I decided on a "no frills, get the basics right" approach and we made lots of changes to our plans on the Saturday afternoon.

On the morning, as you are all aware, the weather was wonderful, showing off the Surrey Hills at their very best to all our visitors from UK, Belgium and Holland and everyone seemed to have a great time. While you were running, amongst other things, I was watching the cars come down the hill from the level crossing and noting how fast all of the parking space was filling. To me, you seemed to come in an endless line but Alastair Doyle and his hardworking car parking team just seemed to squeeze you all in somewhere with an absolute minimum of queueing. Thanks to all who waited so patiently, to the very few, who found it necessary to vent their feelings on the hard working volunteers, no thanks from any of us.

Then, suddenly the traffic eased and I realised that you were all parked with some 40 or 50 spaces left, good planning on our part, well, maybe, but a lot of luck as well. This morning, it was raining here and I doubt if as many cars would have got into the original field. Never again, without a hard standing car park at this time of year.

Entries continued to arrive right up to the last minute, we had a target to try to accept every entry, no matter when it arrived. I am certain that we exceeded the numbers at the major badge event on the same area in the late 80s. My thanks to Jon and Angela Darley who kept on top of entries throughout and kept the computers (all 8 of them) running all day.

What can I do on your behalf to thank Mark Smith? He planned some super courses for you and, at the last minute, readily agreed to host all of you in his garden. He also said that if we really had a parking problem, we could use his garden and drive, we had the problem, we used his space, not a murmur from Mark and Rebecca - thank you both, like many others at this event, we could not have done it without you.

Our Controller, David May and his assistant, Charlie Turner, both from SLOW, spent a huge amount of time checking everything and it was a far better event for all of their hard work, on behalf of all competitors and GO, thank you both.

Mark was ably assisted by Neil Harwood, who prepared all the courses and the control descriptions based on the new map by Roger Maher, thank you Neil and Roger. Neil also took on the role of Event Safety Officer and he kept asking all the right questions. On the day, Neil put out controls, helped in the car park field, collected controls and was involved in tracking down the 2 competitors who failed to download. We had just called in the police when we managed to make contact with the last one at his home. We could have done without that as darkness fell and the control collectors returned soaked to the skin - yes, the dry day ended with a torrential downpour. Yes - we were all lucky.

To the landowners, the forest team, the start teams, the finish team, and all involved around the computer area (download, registration, enquiries, drinks, results), thank you all. Hopefully many of you took time to look at the wonderful string course devised by the Denton Family.

For me, the last week has been as hard as WOC99. Attention is already turning to the World Cup, based on Guildford in May 2005, do come back and get involved, it will be a great event.

I trust that you enjoyed your day, it was a memorable experience for many of us.

Tim Pugh