Planner's Comments

Hawley and Hornley is a very fast area for orienteering as demonstrated by the M21A winning time of 5:04 minutes per km. I hope that everyone enjoyed the courses even though for many the course lengths were longer than normal. We were blessed with fine weather all day apart from the brisk headwind for finishers.

Hawley and Hornley provides an interesting challenge especially as the high running speeds make recognition of the path system more challenging. I introduced long legs into the forest diagonally across the path system to maximise the challenge. These were then followed by a series of shorter legs.

I would like to apologise to any competitor who felt disadvantaged on course 8. The OCAD course files were checked thoroughly before they were sent to the printers and I relied on the technology rather than undertaking a full check of the printed maps. I did a brief QC of the maps prior to the event and did not notice the missing finish circle and the missing parts of the control description.

We decided to use waterproof maps that did not need bagging, a decision taken because a map is always more readable without a plastic bag and it should allow better competition, especially for the older competitors who need reading glasses/contact lenses. It also saves hours of bagging maps. However, It is very likely that this error would have been picked up during map bagging.

The lesson to learn from this experience is to thoroughly check each course when the maps return from the printers as we did in the past.

I hope that the error did not upset too many competitors. I trust that many competitors had the correct course description, either downloaded from the web or picked up at registration. The line from the final control, the finish banner and the relative short distance appears to have allowed everyone to finish the course.

Stefan Stasiuk, BKO

Controller's Comments

After a winter of suffering waterlogged sweatshirts and track-suit bottoms, Hawley and Hornley in March 1985 marked the start of freedom for me: we had picked up our brand-new OUOC Ultrasport O-suits the day before, and the REOC relays was my first chance to run in mine. Ever since then I’ve felt a fondness for the place, so I was pleased to agree to control this year’s Concorde Chase.

Stefan’s first set of courses was pretty good. We tweaked a few control locations to make route-choice more challenging, updated some bits of the map and avoided others, where re-mapping all those rhododendrons accurately would have taken more time than we had. The biggest pre-event headache was arranging the start to comply with my insistence that start line, start kite and control 1 on the JM1/JW1/ white course were all in a straight line. Stefan came up with an imaginative solution.

We had one bizarre problem with course 8, the shortest technical course. The generated OCAD file that I checked was fine, but the course as printed was lacking the finish circle as well as lots of the detail that should have been in the control descriptions: see the pictures below. Fortunately the loose descriptions were fine.

    as sent to printer                      as printed (with hand-amendment)

We have discovered that the error occurred at the printer’s. The printer tried to provide for us the best service possible, tailoring the OCAD colours so that they printed exactly right on the specific machine being used. However, for course 8 he mistakenly loaded ‘symbols’ rather than ‘colours’ from an edited map of course 1 part 1; many of the necessary symbols (e.g. ‘finish’, ‘clearing’, ‘gully’, ‘SW part’) were missing and so printed blank. I had thought that printing directly from OCAD removed the need to check carefully all the printed maps, but clearly I was wrong: at least one map per course still needs a careful check. I apologise to all competitors who were affected.

Stefan and I differed on how high to hang the flags in sunken features. I generally went along with his desire to hang them low, raising them only when I though that there was insufficient detail nearby to permit accurate navigation. Navigating at an unremittingly high pace is a valid orienteering test (and is how I like my courses), but so is having to recognise a potentially tricky site and forcing yourself to slow down.

A few courses suffered from the desire to avoid funnelling everybody through the same ‘nice’ sites, particularly in the open area at the end. Yes, it was hard work uphill, into the wind and across rough ground, but there were usually path options if you were too tired to take on the tussocks and the heather. And of course you’d been a bit spoiled by the rest of the area being so fast. I did wonder whether 13.3km might have been too long for M21L (from which all the other course-lengths are calculated) but Clive, Nick, Jez and Tuomas ran at just over 5 min/km and proved Stefan right.

Roger Thetford, TVOC

Organiser's Comments

Firstly, a big thank you to all of you for coming to the Concorde Chase and to those who emailed us afterwards to say how much they had enjoyed the event. Much appreciated.

There was a bigger turn out than we had expected, especially as the details mysteriously disappeared from the listings in the issue of Compass Sport just prior to the event. When we discovered this, my daughter Rachel checked the websites of all the clubs within an 80 mile radius and if the event wasn’t listed, sent an email with the flyer enclosed asking for the webmaster to include it on their site. Must have worked.

We hope that you enjoyed the convenience of having an assembly area and parking on hard standing. For that, thanks go to the army and in particular Major Jon Steed who could not have been more helpful. As the male part of the co-organisers, I have to apologise to those ladies who needed the toilets early on. I hadn’t twigged that on an army base there were not likely to be many ladies, or ladies toilets in the gym. But hopefully we made up for this by commandeering half of the gent’s toilets and setting up a one way system as soon as we were made aware.

Neither Rachel nor I could finish these comments without mentioning the members of BKO who gave up their time. We were taken aback by the number of email offers we had (what did we do before emails?) and didn’t need to phone a single club member for help. And so efficient on the day!

Alain and Rachel Wilkes, BKO