Hi everyone,
Thought I'd share my story of how I met some teams at the beginning of Leg 3 in Oxford.
After arriving in town at 8pm I immediately noticed the production vans in the main car park in Oxford, after spending 2 hours circling Christ Church, bus and train station to no success I returned home for a few hours.
Arriving back in town at midnight I again wondered around the city and watched the main gates at Christ Church college which were now closed to see if I could spot teams, again no luck. However after walking toward the train station for the second loop of the city in this stint I walked directly into the teams.
The surfers and dentists walked directly towards me at about 12:45am I could hardly believe it! They asked to use my phone (still running multiple RFF tabs haha) and searched directions from Aberdeen train station to a car park and then to drive their ford focuses to the ferry. They also looked at ferries to Lerwick and googled puffins, I too saw their clue and it asked them to find the puffin on Lerwick (or words very similar)
Jim took the lead googling and I got filmed with both teams, 2 minutes in we were joined by the Survivor team. All worked together to write down the instructions. They had already found the train that left at 6:36am in the morning. All were really chatty and kind and spent at least 5mins with them. Bethany asked if I surfed as I was wearing a Billabong jumper and I told them how remote the Shetlands were. They were all very appreciative and I couldnt believe I had walked right into their path. Think they were the first 3 teams as they joked about teams 4 hours behind catching up.
Another hour later and no more teams so I decided to drive home at 2am, 2 mins in to my drive I spot another team, the firefighters in red who were running towards the train station.
Knowing their train time I went home for a quick 3 hour power sleep and returned to the station at 6am, to see the remaining 9 teams. Tried to disguise myself by wearing a massive hat so the teams I saw didn't recognise me. Sat on the platform til about 6:20am until all the teams started to move to the platform for their train. Pretty sure Bethany, Adam and Whitney recognised me as looked directly at me when I was taking photos - only about 40 other people at the station at this time.
9 teams were everyone except the Pink girls and Isabelle and Dennis, have loads of photos, but will upload the best now.
Sorry for the essay, but wanted to share my uber cool experience of being filmed and watching the race in action.
