Congratulations to our team for winning this year's Area Finals.
Our team: Andrew Wright, Sharon Dingle and Jim Collins all travelled to South Yorkshire to represent the Essex Area having qualified at our Open Qualifier in June at The Auberies Estate Bulmer.
Jim was also the individual runner up, and Andrew the highest placed newcomer at the Area Finals.
Huge congratulations and well done to you all.
Full report by Sharon Dingle
Area Finals 7th July.
I think I can speak for all of us, myself, Andrew Wright and Jim Collins, that it was a great pleasure to represent The Essex URC in this competition. We met up the night before for a meal with Glynnis Hillier who was on her way down from Northumberland and gate crashed our party and appointed herself our Groupie for the event.
Held at the beautiful Warncliffe Chase the well organised and orchestrated test offered woodland, rolling moorland, water, bracken and white grass. Judges were Glyn Coupar, Mick Newsam, Arthur Hewer and John Yarwood. The tests were very varied and some included and extra ’joker’ retrieve.
At some point all dogs in the team had to take the joker. Jock my dog had the first one after we had all taken three long blinds in bracken. It was a memory mark which he made light work of with no handling, so we were off to a good start. A walk up with mock drive and bolting rabbit with three blinds and three marks was followed by a test involving three blinds and a memory mark on open moorland where Jim picked the joker smartly.
After lunch we moved to a different area for the last two tests.
By a small pond a mark which was to be a memory was thrown a long way out on moorland followed by a mark into the pond. We all picked these retrieves in rotation. It was at this point Andrews Goldie choose to live up to the ‘swamp collie’ nickname when he picked his joker over the pond and came back through some very dense black mud. You can go off people, so I distanced myself with my light-coloured Chinos!
The last test was a walk up on moorland where we had a ‘rabbit’ blind shot out to the side in bracken and a memory mark each which concluded the day.
We retired to a local community hall for a lovely buffet and the presentation.
We were delighted to come first by a clear ten points. Jim also came Runner Up top dog and Andrew was presented ’Best Newcomer’.
Thank you URC Essex for allowing us to represent you. Thanks also to URC North Midlands for hosting and from me thanks to my lovely team members Andrew and Jim who were the best company and excellent sports.