It was a singular misfortune that the tenant farmer decided to change his mind and forbid us from using his land, which had pits, contoured areas, tricky vague areas with marshes, and major hills with route choice possibilities.
It casts doubt on any future use of the area, and it may be necessary to hold separate smaller events on the W and E end of the area in future. Connecting the W and E again would probably be impracticable.
An unfortunate consequence of Open Access is that although unorganised access is made easier, the bureaucracy of putting on anything organised is made more difficult. Even bolstered by these rules the landowner seems to have no power to influence the tenant farmer’s behaviour.
The affect on courses was considerable. More pressure exerted itself to use the already crowded areas to the South and West. The immediate challenge was how to link these regions to the rest of the area to the North and East.
The stiles coordinator dismissed, after examination, the possibility of having two stiles to separate the outgoing and incoming runners, but we decided to go ahead and erect a second stile, come what may, which proved to be a successful undertaking.
The course lengths were reduced somewhat, and although an attempt was made to achieve the original lengths, we fell significantly short on at least one course (7).
Another affect of the change was that older age groups were regrettably obliged to run across a rocky section of the Southern area.
Congratulations are due to Tony Thornley and Roger Lott – the map was very acceptable indeed.
That’s not to say a future edition will not need some amendments. As experienced orienteers we all seem to have our own interpretations of the terrain. All my recommendations were looked at very sympathetically by Tony and Roger.
On the whole the comments received by competitors who had finished were positive. If there was any criticism I think it was to say that the navigation was too easy. In some parts of the area, that was unavoidable. I tried to make up for it by introducing some route choice, but several of the best route choice legs were lost when we lost Towler’s field.
Another way of making the navigation harder is to use really difficult control sites, for example, very small re-entrants. This I only partly succeeded in doing, a lesson I should have learnt by now. In particular there were one or two “AB FAB”, but rather obvious, boulders, which I could not resist because of their sheer presence in the landscape. At one of these the kite was placed too visibly.
Many yellow tags were eaten, moved, despatched – you name it, it happened. I have no evidence of which species was the main culprit, but there were plenty of sheep, cattle and rabbits in the area.
The cattle caused a real problem with the actual controls and number labels. Possibly we could have arranged with the farmer to keep his stock out for the days surrounding the event.
I would advise planners not to use the cheaper plastic pegs in Dales areas; rather use heavy duty longer red pegs (all of which survived)
I got the feeling that I was one step behind with this from the word go. When selecting control sites, one does not really have the stile positions at the forefront of one’s mind. It is almost impossible to give accurate locations until all control sites have been confirmed.
On this particular area, the walls were so high and unsound that with hindsight it would have been better to indicate rough positions for stiles, say to within 20m or 30m either way, then ask the stile person to visit. He then finds a suitable nearby crossing point and measures up accordingly, and feeds back to the planner by sending a jpeg of the map with the accurate positions.
I know that’s a lot to ask, but if achieved it means there’s no doubt as to heights and positions.
I must express my thanks and appreciation to David Rosen for controlling excellently and calmly, diplomatically preventing me from bypassing too many of the rules! His meticulousness was an example to all budding controllers.
Also my sincere thanks are due to Chris Burden, surpassing all normal expectations of an organiser. He assisted my efforts, not only the organisational aspect but gave practical help with control placing and collection.
Tony Thornley as ever put in hours and hours of surveying time and gave valuable course advice. Similarly Roger Lott went out there on the slopes working the magic for us.
Thanks also to Alex A, Guy P, Richard F and Dave A.
Ali Wood 24th September 2015