Planner's CommentsMy first visit to Swinley West was about four years ago, with the SCOA Junior Squad, when it was run by David Nixon. It was my first squad training, and I remember that one exercise involved taking a bearing and counting our paces through a couple of hundred metres of 6 foot bracken.I also remember that in the afternoon we had a map memory exercise involving memorising a few controls, punching them, then coming back to memorise a few more. However Mark Nixon memorised the whole lot and ran round in one go. On my first visit to the area as planner, I was slightly apprehensive after seeing the extent and height of the bracken. Despite this, I found lots of sites that I considered to be usable. It was decided that the map needed a bracken-screen update in order for the event to go ahead. I certainly tried to make it challenging with regard to route choice. From looking at the splits of the leaders, the optimum routes seemed to go round the area in an anti-clockwise direction, picking up the middle controls near the end. It was sad to hear stories from people who had decided to miss out number 1, only to realise that they had time at the end and could have visited it. But I suppose that’s part of the challenge of a score event! I was really pleased at the high number of controls visited by some of the juniors, as again there was no obvious optimum route. I received some very positive comments about the course, and I’m glad so many people seemed to enjoy it. Thank you to all the people who helped collect the many controls in after the event. Lastly I’d like to say a huge thank you to Roger Thetford for his invaluable guidance throughout the planning process. Anne Edwards (TVOC)
Controller's CommentsAfter my first visit in June I said that the area as it then stood was unusable for a score event because the rampant unmapped bracken would have made it unfair. Fortunately, mapping the bracken (and some ways through it!) plus a bit of replanning, some gardening and some tweaks to the map gave an event that I was happy to be associated with.Orienteering is meant to be 'running navigation'. Swinley will never demand intricate fine navigation, but the scatter of controls posed route-choice problems all the way round. By 'clustering' controls Anne could encourage direct running through the all-too-limited blocks of white forest, and also avoid the unnecessary 'non-orienteering' complication of giving higher points values to the remote controls. As those people who inadvertently missed a control will attest, it was important to maintain concentration the whole time. The demand for fast running, intense concentration and quick thinking is what gives me a buzz about orienteering. Anne's course at Swinley offered all these, sunshine, straightforward controls for the juniors, and cakes too: apart from perhaps a larger area, what more could you want? Roger Thetford, TVOC and JOK
Organiser's CommentsThank you everyone for coming along and supporting the SCOA Junior Squad. As you will have seen, the event was essentially planned and organised by squad members and thanks to you all, the proceeds of the event will benefit greatly the future squad activities. Your smiles and positive comments after your run have encouraged the squad to make this a regular event.From an Organiser’s point of view the event went fairly smoothly, with the only problems being a dog bite and a cut shin that needed treatment from the St John’s folk. The area is widely used by dog walkers and, as a local forest user, I can say that it is pretty rare that uncontrolled dogs are encountered. A big thank you to all the helpers from the SCOA Junior Squad, their family and friends. Also, many thanks to BKO for lending the equipment and the great support of the event by SCOA and EMIT UK. Last but not least, thanks to squad member Anne Edwards who did really well planning her first event, and to Roger Thetford for his patient and helpful controlling of the event. Dave Rogers, BKO/SCOA Junior Squad Manager |
Results by Emit UK
eTiming Version 1.8 Emit as