CONGO STREAM AND HENLEY GATE

PLANNER

Hope you enjoyed the event. The aim was to use two of SN's smaller areas, one very pleasant and runnable (Henley gate north), and one very intricate (Congo stream). The join between them did not require too much of a taped route, though it was across a fast road. Putting training (always on) SI units on Henley Gate meant we could put units out there on Saturday and saved a lot of time on Sunday.

With so many Badge (regional) events at this time of year the aim was to produce something different, we thought the longer courses would like changing scale during the race. I did note that 7 people on Blue and 2 on Brown failed to punch at the control where you turned the map over. I presume you all must have forgotten to punch as it was so close to the end of the tapes. With so few paths the White, Yellow and Orange proved the hardest to plan. With only one path across the deep and smelly stream we had to add a taped route by the road to get the Yellow and Orange over the stream at another place.

Many thanks to Simon Ling for his excellent controlling, everything on the day went well which is a testament to Simon and John Brown the organiser.

One piece of advice to you all- if you must fall in a smelly brown marsh, let go of your map before you fall in - as the maps don't function that well with brown sludge all over them.

Pete Jones (SN)

CONTROLLER

This area (or these areas) were new to me and I had to check the grid reference on the flier before being able to find them on the ordnance survey map. I suspect they may have been new to many competitors also, so I hope you enjoyed the experience. There was a good turnout and it was quite exciting to stand in the forest watching large numbers of runners moving, mostly purposefully, in every direction.

The topography made things very difficult for Pete Jones but the solution which he came up with for the long courses seemed to work very well even if one or two people got lost making the road crossing between the two areas! Both areas are good for orienteering, and Congo Stream in particular offers quite a severe technical challenge in the detailed nature of the terrain and the sheer number of features. This has the side effect of making it difficult to plan the junior non-technical courses, but I believe these were also successful and within the guidelines.

Congratulations to Pete, John Brown and to all their helpers for putting on a very good event.

Simon Ling (MV)

ORGANISER

The weather was certainly kind to us and we were also very fortunate in having a building right on the area to use for registration. But what really made the difference for me was the excellent team of helpers from the Club. My very grateful thanks to them for their cheerful and willing help. All this seemed to make the event go smoothly for us and, we hope, for all the participants, too.

John Brown (SN)