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Holcote and Reynolds Wood

Sunday 27th May 2012


Results

Splits

SplitsBrowser

RouteGadget

Organiser and Planner's comments

The club champs is a small friendly event when we organise a closed event just for ourselves and it seemed like a good idea to use Holcote and Reynolds Wood which we previously used in early spring - or mid winter as it was on the day. This time everything was different - the weather just got hotter, I hope nobody found the heat too oppressive. The area was much reduced because the Woodland Trust kindly agreed to us using the area, but asked us to use only main paths in the ancient Holcote Wood which rather defeats the point of a green course. As a result I ended up squeezing the courses into Reynold Wood, the youngest most Westerly area which has an abundance of thickets and hardly-used tracks but little else as you came to see.
I tried to make the adult courses as technical as possible but the abundance of point features weren't suitable for the junior course which ended up being a route choice exercise with a chance for corner cutting. Congratulations to both James and Becky who both did just that. The few traces so far on RouteGadget and comments in discussions afterwards showed that perhaps one of Steve's coaching exercises will need to be techniques for fine orienteering! If you get chance, do try to plot your course on Routegadget.
A big thank you to Robert for controlling me and updating the map on demand, both essential to ensure fairness and clarity. I hope you enjoyed your challenge as much as I did preparing it.

Keith Downing

Controller's comments

A reversal of roles from our EA league event, but Keith had a much more constricted problem than I had.
From my experience checking and your comments, what a good job Keith did to produce such a technical course from such a small area. And if you competitors thought it difficult finding a large orange a white kite, just think of the planner and controller looking for yellow and green stripe insulation tape as site markers. And no, I don't think Keith chose the colour scheme of the tape deliberately for optimum camouflage, but I bet it was not the first thing you saw at the control site!

Robert Dove

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