Results for Saturday’s event at Sheepscombe are now published on the Results page.
Many thanks to James and Pat for planning and setting up the event, on what is always a very steep but beautiful area of the escarpment. Thanks also to the National Trust Ebworth centre for allowing us to park, and for the excellent toilet facilities! Also to everyone who helped, but perhaps particularly to the control collectors who will have doubled their climb….
Planner James Askew comments:
Thank you all for coming to Sheepscombe yesterday and I hope that the local traffic restrictions didn’t impact your travel too much.
Sheepscombe presents obvious challenges for both competitors and planners, but looking at the winning times it seems as though the shortened courses did still result in appropriate challenges given the unavoidable ascent and descent. I hope no one felt that they had done too many hill reps! Apologies to those impacted by the issue around the overgrown path/gate; in retrospect we should have checked this as it was clearly a likely route choice, but the path mapped through the dark green suggested that the route should have been OK, whilst we did indeed check all the stile type crossing points on the far side of the fields. I hope that this did not spoil your overall enjoyment of the event. It was my first time both as planner and organiser, so any feedback would be gratefully received.
The support shown by club members was fantastic and enabled the event to take place. So thank you to all who were involved – Map production and printing, Car Park Marshalls (including dealing with an unexpected visit from an unmarked police car!), Registration and Enquiries, 1st Aid, Download and Results, String Course, NGOC Cafe, Start Team, and Control Collectors.
In particular I’d like to thank by name two people: Greg who, alongside map updates, worked so hard for such a long time gaining permissions, access, and agreements with the relevant organisations – without these we could not even have started planning; and Pat who mentored me for months through the planning and organising process, as well as the intricacies of Purple Pen software – I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor and controller.
I spent many hours in the woods over the past few months and most of time I never met anyone – it was a real privilege to be able to have such a beautiful space to myself. As for yesterday, I will especially remember the wonderful scent of the wild garlic.
We hope to see you at future NGOC events.