Results and Split Times
Photos

Planner’s Comments

A lovely sunny day and an excellent turnout for a level D event. I hope you all enjoyed the event despite the failing SI units, the heavy undergrowth and the standing water!

I can still remember when Horsford Heath was easily runnable, the only real problem for the orienteer being a miscount of the path crossings and a fruitless search for the control feature in the wrong block of woodland. However the heath has changed so much in the last few years with significant undergrowth across the whole area, with blanket coverage of head-high bracken in some sections of the map. This severely limited the areas of the heath that can be used for orienteering and the control sites were carefully selected to, as far as possible, avoid areas of heavy bracken and controls of a “bingo” nature.

The failing SI units were not the only problem for me personally, as I had left some of the control stakes at home and had to make an urgent call to my wife early Sunday morning to bring the remainder of the stakes to me in the forest. Those of you who have planned an event will know how much pressure you are under in the morning to get all the controls out in time and the panic that sets in if anything goes wrong.

The unexpectedly large turnout also created a problem as we had insufficient maps for the Score event. It’s difficult to judge the number of maps required for any event (we try avoid wasting maps and unnecessary cost) but clearly the fine weather encouraged more to turn out than we anticipated for a low-key event and we were light on the day. As a result we had to quickly change our plans and issue a mix of Score 1 and Score 2 maps at the start – the original plan was to issue everyone with the Score 1 map at the outset, the Score 2 map being secondary.

To some extent, those getting the Score 2 map at the Start were handicapped in having just 12 controls covering the whole area compared with the 15 on Score 1. Apologies if this reduced your enjoyment in any way.

As always, thanks are due to a number of people: Alan as usual for advice, supplying the equipment and his patience on the day in working around the failing SI units; Les Jarrald for organising the event and all the helpers he cajoled. Also, particular thanks are due to Daniel Cowley for so successfully resolving the issues with the results stemming from the failing SI units.

Along with Les, Michael Chopping and Mick Liston, Daniel also helped collecting controls at the end of the event. A big thank you to you all.

Trevor