Quantocks long O - thanks.

[Jon Brooke]

What a fantastic event yesterday. Apart from the fact the sun was shining, we had a great course with proper O controls requiring some fine nav on the approach, but long legs with plenty of good over or round type route choice too.

But most impressive of all, the event was based at a village hall (with a shower!) where we were treated to some delicious home made soup and bread + tea and cake for afters when we finished.

Thanks QO for exceptional hospitality and a great day out.

[RJ]

Long-Os are a feature of the sport that has a strong following. It would be a pity if they were to die out for lack of support, because advertising was missed. I feel that they could do with a 'national' league, a bit like the Urban league. I know the Copeland Chase is coming up soon on November 14th which WCOC are staging.... http://www.lakes-o.com.... but are there other ones on the horizon?

[EddieH]

The Lakes (WCOC I think) used to stage a real long O every 4 years. It was one of the major highlights in my calandar and was sometimes 1 day, sometimes 2.

What it always had was variety. We ran across a number of linked maps, (and in those days scales contour interval etc varied much more than now,) and each map had a different planner, (and in those days there was less conformity with planning as well).

The result was genuinely long continuous orienteering, and if one planner's courses were not entirely to your taste there was soon another one to come.

I remember a 1 day 50km using Blengdale (1:15000 25ft), Skalderskew (1:75000 25 ft black and white), an open area whose name I forget (1:20000 10m), Dent (1:15000 5m) Lowther Park (1:15000 5m). Utterly brilliant.

The last one was 2 days of around 30km, one day a circuit of Eskdale using Dalegarth West, Dalegarth East, Eeel Tarn and Blea Tarn. The other day had more woodland and used Parkgate and Irton, Mitredale and Blea Tarn.

I am looking forward to Grampian's November offering involving conventional O and mountain O along with some other good looking features.

[awk]

l].... but are there other ones on the horizon?

Distant horizon perhaps, but Sept 2012 sees the next Leeds Long-O, around the Aire valley, linking half a dozen or so areas together. (Leeds, but actually most of it will be officially in Bradford, so the name may well be different!).

[The Loofa]

I echo everything Jon Brooke said about the QO long O
except that he failed to mention the brilliant views over the Bristol Channel - rounding the hill to number 6, and down the ridge to no 8 were exceptional.
I can only conlude that as he won the race he never noticed them.

Eddie's memory of Eskdale goes back to 1983. I learnt to read contours that weekend - 7 hours of navigating slowly through rich contour detail did the trick.

The idea of making things a series to gain support has good evidence to support it. A few years ago the classic long fell races in the Lakes had dwindling numbers. They made themselves into a series with prizes and numbers recovered. (as mentioned on other threads) SLOW's park races and winter street-Os are nothing new and different in themselves, but making them a series gets people going. Think also Nopesport Urban league and Kent Night Cup

So a national long-O series may well help
(and no that wasn't an offer to organise it)

[RJ]

I remember a 1 day 50km using Blengdale (1:15000 25ft), Skalderskew (1:75000 25 ft black and white), an open area whose name I forget (1:20000 10m), Dent (1:15000 5m) Lowther Park (1:15000 5m). Utterly brilliant.

I think that area was Matty Benn's Bridge, EddieH. We have now remapped it and it forms part of the huge Kinniside Common map. This was used for the Copeland Chase two years ago.

The Long-O in Eskdale in '83, for which I was the organiser, had less than 100 entries. It was one of the first times we used computing.... a sinclair spectrum, with the printout on that shiny grey paper!! We used six large O maps which are virtually contiguous in the Eskdale Valley. This involved a lot of permissions and meant that the areas couldn't be used again that year, at least.

The Copeland Chase last year used the entire section SE of Scafell, including Eel and Stony Tarns, Burnmoor Tarn and Blea Tarn..... had to be called Eskdale Tarns!! Wonderful terrain that was rained upon for several days and held several inches of standing water over the whole area for the event. This was a week before it rained again and threw twelve inches down onto the saturated ground. Then it emptied into the various lakes and flowed past (through) my house!!