Thanks Corion - interesting thought.

but unfortunately it's only finding 1 at a time. The speed is about 2 per second which is quite atrocious.

And I agree, it should only find 1 too. I'm guessing there's a fixed overhead for findnodes which would make sense for what I'm seeing

Anyway, I've got a few more replies to try out :-)
and maybe it is time to re-visit my old friend XSLT

Thanks again for the reply - I'll post back any more findings