Click here for photos
	Click here for photos

Easily our biggest event of the year, this year saw us run the 8th annual tour of the New Forest. It was 6 months in the planning, two months of route finding, 5 days of route checking, countless hours of producing entry forms, sending out entry forms, ordering rally plaques and finish plaques, making packed lunches, water bottles, tea, coffee, rolls and bacon. Few people have any idea of how much planning and fretting went into putting this whole day together!

Then there are the little twists, like finding that Hampshire County Council had closed one of the roads on the route and this just a week before the day! But everyone prayed hard to the weather gods and those prayers were certainly answered when we all awoke to glorious sunshine on the morning. A new idea this year was to offer all the entrants bacon butties with tea or coffee at the start. Along with giving out lunch time snacks, signing people on and giving out road books, the start is a veritable hive of activity. The stats make interesting reading, 360 bottles of water, 370 sandwich packs with crisps, 234 rolls, 600+ rashers of bacon and 240 cups of tea or coffee. There was even a man who wanted to use the oven to dry out his float bowl!

Entrants were flagged away by Maggie Gwynne of Hampshire & Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, giving long time starter Nigel Hedges a rest this year. A lovely 40 mile route, around the north of the New Forest, leads everybody to Beaulieu for the lunch time halt. Again we had an unexpected twist, nobody from the museum had told us the toilets were inside the complex, still we believe blushes were saved?

The afternoon gave people the chance to choose between two routes, long and short depending on how long they wanted to take for lunch. After a day of touring in glorious weather, everyone converged on the Quomps in Christchurch, alongside the lovely river Avon for prize giving and raffles.

Report by Martin Charles.

Click here for photos

Charities
This year saw a healthy profit from the Run, resulting in donations of £1000 going to each of our chosen charities, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Air Ambulance and BASICS

Sponsors
Malcolm Bailey of Artisan Internet, the main sponsor.
Tim Yonoff of Efficient Food Services, for the breakfast supplies.
Nigel Hedges of Bourne Engraving, for the super Trophies.

Feedback
The post event feedback would seem to indicate we are not going to be allowed to take a break next year - here's a selection:

• "Good combination of forest, heath and coast throughout"
• "Good weather - weren't we lucky! Thank you all, very well organised as usual"
• "A very pleasant route, weather much better than last year, please organise similar in future!"
• "Very impressive arrangements with every aspect covered. Bacon butties much appreciated!"
• "Fifth time for us and as good as ever. Brilliant organisation - do your marshalls have a helicopter?"
• Quite the best run we have ever done - we so appreciated the welcome and help we received from all your helpers. A truly enjoyable day"

Questionnaire
Many participants took the time to complete our questionnaire, a valuable tool that helps us to find out the most (and least) popular aspects of the New Forest Run. Here are a few of the responses: