The scene is the car-park of a country pub. It may be a Friday evening in autumn or winter, or a summer Sunday morning. Cars converge and disgorge their occupants - men and women, plus a sprinkling of youngsters. Walking boots are donned, clipboards and pens are clutched, torches too, if it is night-time. People in their groups of four or five make for the pub. Pleasantries are exchanged between the groups - and sometimes there is joshing and ribaldry: for these are old adversaries. They have ramble-rallied, many of these teams, over the years. Some will have introduced their spouses and children to the sport and now be competing as a family unit; other teams comprise a group of friends. Mostly though, they are work colleagues, or ex-colleagues. For this strangely compelling hobby of ours began in 1963 as one discipline amongst many in a firm's sports and social club. Reminiscent of a hunt meet, the various teams, as colourful a crew in their rally-raiment as you could meet in a day's, er, ramble, are making their way towards the pub and the Organisers' table to announce their arrival.
The team captain reports his team's readiness to the Organisers. Each team will be sent off at its allotted time, being presented with map, general instructions and cluesheets at the instant of timing-out. Only then do the teams discover their course and the time allowed to complete it and clap eyes on the clues they are set to find. They will now be seen to go into a huddle as the captains endeavour to apprise each team member of any specific instructions, each team's navigator seeks to acquaint himself with the map and the set route, whilst cluesheets are rapidly passed around in the (usually vain) hope of memorising each others' clues. As soon as they feel able, for the minutes are ticking away, the teams move off , in what they imagine to be the right direction.
Teams are usually sent off at three, four, or five-minute intervals and often, if the number of entries dictates, alternately in opposite directions. Thus twenty-six teams on a staggered start at five-minute intervals and going off alternately in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions, would leave over the space of an hour. Typically, Club rallies allow something like two miles per hour, so that a six-mile course would carry a permitted time of about three hours. To this the kindly Organiser may well add quaffing time at an en-route pub.
It is customary to allow a short period of light penalties in excess of the permitted time - say one point per minute for the first twenty minutes over time, followed by a swingeing five points per minute after that. It is in teams' interests to avoid the latter; there have been instances of teams finishing with minus points when time penalties have outweighed clue points gained! This normally only happens when a team 'walks off the map', i.e. gets hopelessly lost, but has also occurred when a team outstays its time in the pub...
Eventually, the teams arrive at the designated finishing point. Cluesheets are handed in and the time noted. Conviviality ensues as the bar heaves with ever more returning ramblers. Maybe a hundred and fifty people have competed this day: they will at last disperse, leg-weary but satisfied by their physical endeavours, to await the publication of the results a few days later, with the inevitable post-mortems and possible recriminations on the clue-solving, navigating and points-awarding fronts!