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Planner's Comments

It was great to be planning almost literally on my own doorstep: the route to the blue start went within sight of our house. It was also a privilege to be able to plan on a vast area brand new to orienteering. But it was always going to be a challenge – rocks that were difficult to map, boulder-fields and overgrown boulder-fields that were ankle-breaking territory, impassable cliffs and too many tussocks once out on the moor proper.

Both the wooded slopes were difficult to plan on and from this start. The routes in the woods tended to stay at a similar level, but any higher than the control sites I used and you would have been in boulder fields; any nearer the path and everybody would have been running along the path and up and down in and out of the control. On Big Moor areas of tussock constrained planning. All the medium-length courses ended up with routes through the runnable area SE of White Edge trig point; though I’m afraid course 4 then had a foray out into the deeper stuff. Shorter technical courses stayed mostly clear of tussocks near the Edges.

I had originally planned the technical courses to start 200m East of the Blue start (with some courses running south-eastwards through the wooded area), but sheep have been kept out of that area for the last 10 years and the bracken just didn't go flat. The controller and myself agreed that M80s mountaineering over giant hummocks of bracken would have been rightfully aggrieved, so I moved the start to its final position.

I’m really gutted about missing the problem with symbol-size on the larger A3 maps. I’m sure many competitors had more trouble reading the map than was necessary; luckily the weather was bright and the trees were leafless, so at least light levels were high. It was only after two comments at the finish that I realised the problem, which was caused by the need to redo this version of the OCAD file from scratch too near the printing deadline, due to problems getting Condes to pick up the map. I’m very sorry for this.

I’d always suspected course lengths would be a little on the short side but Kevin King (controller) persuaded me that at the end of January, with no previous events to guide us I should aim towards the bottom end of the target range. As it turned out the runnability was probably at its best after so much snow flattening the vegetation and the ground being at least partially frozen so most class winners beat the target times. I found it difficult to balance appropriate physical and technical challenges for course 13 (includes M80L and W70L) and ended up with a very fast winning time.

Collecting the last few controls on Monday 1st Feb

Control 64 (courses 2 and 8)

Control 102 (course 3)

Control 59 (courses 2 and 9)

Wednesday 3rd the snow came again

Car park fields from 69 (11,12,13,14,17,18)

Control 49 (course 14)

Brian Shaw (co-ordinator) also lives on the edge of the map. We had all long thought it would provide a great orienteering challenge, but with Big Moor being both an archaeological and natural SSSI we thought we would never get access for orienteering. However, the CROW act changed attitudes and the Peak Park were now happy to grant access at this time of year. Everybody whose land you crossed was very helpful, but special thanks go to David Thorp for access to the moorland south of the road and to Andrew Carson, the ranger for the Peak Park Eastern Moors estate, who allowed us to access his field and driveway to get to the blue start off the road. I’d also like to thank Kevin King, controller, and Mick Lucking for picking up at the print works a couple of issues that had escaped our checking.

Peter Gorvett, SYO, Planner.

Organiser's Comments

Organising an event in January on high moorland in the Peak District was inevitably going to mean worrying about the weather. Months ago, during our first site meeting, Brian Shaw had said "it's often a nice weekend at the end of January". Well, he was right. The snow and ice that had been around for weeks had almost all thawed, the sun came out, and the forecast strong northerly winds didn't materialise.

Cliff College was an ideal location for the event assembly. Overall, the event organisation went very well - thanks for your positive comments.

Unfortunately not everything ran smoothly on the day, and I apologise to those of you with early start times that were affected by the starts not quite being ready. At the Blue start we decided a pre-start at -6 minutes would be helpful to competitors, in case of bad weather. It turned out to be unneccessary, but was harder to manage, and some of you had to have punching starts, or be rushed through the start boxes. The Red start was due to open at 1015, but some EOD runners were given earlier start times, so they too had to be re-arranged.

We had hoped for an entry level of between 800 and 1,000 people. In the end, we had around 730 competitors. That was a little disappointing, but just enough to break even financially.

It took a large team of SYO helpers to run not only this National Event, but also the Regional Event at Beeley the previous day, so a big thanks to all of them. Thanks also to our Controller, Kevin King, for his good suggestions in relation to some aspects of the event organisation.

Thanks to you all for coming, and congratulations to the new Northern Champions!

Martin Ward, SYO, Organiser.

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