Organiser’s
Comments
It was a day of mixed fortunes. Early on the planner
and controller realised that three controls had
been tampered with, and indeed we are now poorer
to the tune of one control box and two stakes.
The person in question had thrown one complete
unit down a mine-shaft. Ian Bowles came to the
rescue later with his mountaineering skills.
Is it a good idea to
label all controls with a polite notice
explaining what the controls are doing?
Personally I am not convinced. Unfortunately, the
occasional local resident seems to have an
unwarranted sense of ownership for the wonderful
bits of Dartmoor which we would like to share
occasionally. Does such a person respond to
polite notices? Obviously DEVON OC had sought
permission from the local Commoners Group to hold
the event.
As to the misplaced
control, we can only blame ourselves for that.
Clearly there is a weakness in the original
mapping of the crags which has gone uncorrected.
Technical terrain presents greater challenge to
mappers as well as to competitors. The
club’s map stock represents our greatest
asset, and we are engaged in a systematic plan to
upgrade the precision of the maps. The paths on
West Down were remapped two years ago using a
recent detailed aerial photograph, but
unfortunately that crag “slipped off the
edge”, and being in woodland probably
requires a traditional ground survey. So it is
work in progress. We hope you agree the area
justifies the effort.
We are introducing
coaching activities at some events, led by Wilf
and Eleanor Taylor. These cover both technical
exercises for experienced orienteers and
“meeting and greeting” for beginners.
Look out for their report in due course on this
project.
It was a pleasure to
welcome competitors from neighbouring clubs as
well as from DEVON OC for this Gallopen event. On
your behalf I thank in particular Bryan Smith the
planner and Nick Maxwell the controller, but also
Sue Painter, John and Ruth Chesters, Jemma Davie
and Derek Parkin who stood in the rain, and those
doing slightly pleasanter jobs in the tent –
Viv Maxwell, Rosemary Steer, Tracey Blackford,
John Dyson and Graham Dugdale, plus the control
collectors.
Alan Simpson
Planner’s
Comments
The misplacing of one control, affecting
three of the seven courses, inevitably took the
edge off what was intended to be a good,
challenging Galoppen held in physically demanding
and varied terrain. Apologies to all who were
affected; it was clearly disappointing to runners
as well as those who assisted with the event.
My thanks in particular to Nicholas
Maxwell for his suggestions about a number of the
courses, each of which were improved as a result,
as well as for assistance with a range of other
tasks. The bracken at Virtous Lady in
November is much less dense than in the height of
summer and seemed to allow reasonable route
choice on many of the legs across open land.
This terrain provided good contrast to the steep
or more runnable wooded areas. Hopefully a
good few people will make use of route gadget to
indicate the choices they made.
Bryan Smith
Controller's Comments
First an apology to those on
the green, blue and brown courses for the
misplacing of control 81 and in particular to
anyone who retired as a result of this error.
The flag was placed on a wide unmapped crag
further down the hillside. This meant that
those who approached it from higher up the
hillside would have been seriously disadvantaged
in seeing the flag and given the vandalism
of three controls early in the morning some may
have concluded that the flag was not in
position. For this reason it is proposed
that the leg times to and from this control are
excluded in the final results times.
The confusion arose partly because the area of
green to the north of the control had been
completely removed, and the white was also
thicker here. Whilst corrections to the map
were made around some other control sites, unfortunately
this one was not spotted. Otherwise
competitors' comments on Bryan Smith's
courses were favourable and we were both very
relieved to discover that we had identified and
replaced all the controls that disappeared, at
least one disappearing between 8am and 8.45am.
Nicholas Maxwell
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