Results and Splits for Sunday’s League event at Cranham are now published on the Results page, and the Routegadget link there is also live.
Organiser’s Comments
Thank you all for coming to today’s event at the lovely village and woods of Cranham. I hope that you enjoyed your day – despite the wider traffic issues – and had fun out on the courses. It was heartening to hear so many positive comments and I enjoyed being able to talk with many of you.
My particular thanks to Alice Bedwell as the event Controller. She has been hugely helpful and supportive of me during the months leading up to the event and over this weekend especially – thank you Alice, I’ve learnt a lot from going through the process with you.
The major issue, perhaps for Cranham in particular, but often for events in general is where to park everyone. The only possibility when using the west and central parts of the Cranham map is at the Cricket Club, which accounts for the long walk to the Start and back from the Finish. I had been concerned from the outset as to how the track up to the field would be as well as how wet or snowy the field itself might be; it remained rather touch and go right up to yesterday when we made the decision that it probably would work with judicious use of the tracking we had. Huge thanks go to the team who spent quite a long time putting down the tracking which made access to the field considerably easier than it would have been otherwise.
We knew about the diversion caused by the weekend ‘Missing Link’ road closure, but of course were caught out by the major traffic problems this morning following the road traffic accident, exacerbated by a car rally in the local area! Well done to everyone who persevered and made it to the event still seemingly in good humour! We had already decided to extend the start time window in order to accommodate any late arrivals, but they were not very many in the end.
The committee at the Cricket Club was enormously helpful and supportive and we owe them a lot of thanks.
Apologies to one competitor that we were short of maps for the Yellow course; thank you for agreeing to run up on Orange and we hope that this didn’t spoil your enjoyment of the day.
I must express my gratitude to so many members of NGOC for their support of the event and of me. I reckon that there were at least a couple of dozen members of the club who worked in various capacities before, during, and after the event to make it happen as successfully as it did – thank you all.
James Askew
Planner’s Comments
Cranham is a lovely area, but it is hard to avoid at least one big climb on all courses if they are to work. I wanted to take competitors into as many areas as possible in the woods, and this led to the need for double-sided maps on the longest courses which made details less confusing. I also wanted to give competitors route choices when possible – up to north and round the top / down to the south and back uphill / straight line across – it would be great if people could upload their routes to Routegadget so that we could see where you went! We spent a lot of time working out where to put the Start so as to give access to different features, take different courses in different directions, and enable competitors on Yellow, Red, and Orange to have a positive opening leg. The position of the Start changed several times, but I hope that you all found it at least satisfactory. Visibility and runnability were good on the day with the bracken having died down a lot; nothing seems to kill off the brambles though and there were a few unavoidable patches – we need a cold winter!
We received lots of positive comments immediately after the event from runners on all courses which was gratifying. Please do let us know if you have any particular points.
James Askew
Next Event
The next NGOC event on Saturday 14 March is a league event at Merthyr Mawr.
This league event is combined with the British University Championships and the Welsh league. Merthyr Mawr is an area of sand dunes – one of the best for technical orienteering. Even though it’s a bit further to travel, it will be well worthwhile.