Lakes 5 Days

[RJ]

Today he's just been lazing around drinking tea with me .

Well that's just not good enough - he deserves something stronger than tea!

Yes, and he does. Quite a large salary.... as it is a paid post. However, without all the volunteers within the clubs and their willingness to selflessly put in the hours, the event just would not happen.

[sketchweppers]

I'm still trying to analyse a massive error on #4 on my Hampsfell course so have been looking at the Day 5 map in some detail. I've even printed a high quality enlargement to 1:7500 to see what difference this makes too. I've still not worked out where I went from #3 to #4 but I do understand the previous comments on map legibility better now and, for me, they are mostly down to printing and cartography and not really to do with scale.

I found control number 126 (clearing) on a steep wooded slope twice whilst trying to locate my control 125 (crag) and I got completely confused as I could not see a small clearing anywhere near where I thought I was. I couldn't really see it even when my son pointed it out on his course in broad daylight - I had no chance of spotting it on my map in the dark woods. It was also partially obliterated by my number 8. Now that routegadget is up, I can only just see the clearing when I blow the scale up! My only comment is that the yellow for rough open is too pale and the contours too dark and perhaps the control number should have been moved slightly. I am not convinced a larger scale would have helped. The pale yellow screen also made it difficult to spot the rough open with scattered trees on the map towards the end of the course and this wasn't helped by me arriving there just as the heavens opened.
However I enjoyed Eggerslack Woods, having first visited them as a training area for Lakes 5 in 2010 and found them really tricky.

[PG]

Interestingly O Ringen still use offset printed paper maps in plastic bags.

I'm not sure that the problem of waterproof paper being stretched during litho printing has been highlighted on Nopesport . You can end up with the register marks looking OK, but a corner of the map out of register (my experience as planner of Northern Champs a few years back). Laser printing may not be as high quality as a perfect litho map, but at least it provides a consistent result, not one that is reliant on planners/controllers spending hours checking and weeding out problem maps.

With waterproof paper often losing ink on the folds and becoming difficult to read if in contact with mud as well, I'm convinced that paper maps in plastic bags is the best way of ensuring a good map at our top events.