Planner's Comments

Thanks for all the positive feedback about the courses and the event in general. I think the area came as a surprise to some people and gave them more of a challenge than they were expecting.

The thread on Nopesport relating to the event raised a couple of issues. I was going to respond directly there but, in the way of Nopesport threads, the original discussion had moved on and it had become a discussion on the merits of EMIT / SI which I am not going to comment on other to say that from the planners perspective EMIT is excellent

I agree that the level of detail made the 15000 map difficult to read but thought that this was possibly just my old eyes not being able to cope with 1:15000 any more. When the proofs came back from Alan Halliday a couple of weeks before the event he commented on the visibility of the brown lines so we agreed to increase the thickness of the contours and I also increased the size of the point features. As to the overprint obscuring the paths on the long legs I did check that all junctions were not obscured even though some small runs of path may have been obscured. However the check was done on the computer so even though it appeared alright it might have not been so obvious on the map.

The use of 1:15000 maps for specific age groups at National events is mandated in the guidelines so even though we would have probably only supplied 1:10000 maps if it was Regional event this was not an option here. In hindsight as we made the M21N also the Red course it might have been better to print that course at 1:10000

I must apologise for the overprint obscuring a couple of tracks on courses 19 and 20. In mitigation the start and finish of the tracks were visible on the map and the controls were sited to ‘lead’ the competitors down the correct track.

Could we have had the finish in the Assembly area? In hindsight possibly yes. But when we decided to use the field, in June, the area that you walked through from the finish to the field was covered in bracken about 7 foot high and I did not know what was underneath the bracken. The bracken only died down in the last month. Having chosen what we thought was the best place for the start to provide an interesting set of options for the first controls we were constrained as to where we could put the finish. We wanted to make sure there was no interaction between runners and cars so we had to put the finish before the field.

The one complaint that was voiced on the day was that the Orange was too hard. It has long been the practice to combine the Orange with the M/W 12A courses. As it was a National event we were conscious that the National event course should both follow the guidelines and should be a true test and we were encouraged in this by Hedley. I think Denise planned an excellent course. The wide variety of times, and the number of long times, especially amongst the Orange competitors would indicate that the course was too hard for a lot of people. It was suggested to Denise that she should have put on an ‘easier’ Orange just for the Colour Coded competitors. This is not route that I personally think we should be going down

Our thanks to Hedley for his positive comments and suggestions throughout the process. Also to those who helped me get in the controls before sunset. Denise and I didn’t want to involve anyone else in putting out controls but Denise became ill a few days before the event so we coerced our son Alan, now only an occasional Orienteer, into helping us. Fortunately his navigation and ability to read a map is still good. Thanks to him.

Eric Harper (BKO)

Controller's Comments

When I was asked to review the suitability of the area for a National Event, I was concerned whether it would be possible to set sufficiently testing courses given the extensive path network. I certainly think that Eric and Denise Harper's courses did a good job in avoiding long path runs on the optimum route for the more technical courses. I hope that you felt yourself sufficiently tested. There were certainly many competitors that I saw during the competition who were not finding the navigation entirely straightforward.

My thanks are due to the planners for completing their work in good time and to Liz Turbin, organiser, for anticipating and resolving all the questions on my checklist before I had even asked them.

Hedley Calderbank (HH)