Even odder

[dustytoo]

I'm currently mapping a new small area, and when we have an event there, one particular feature will have the control description of 'Gnomen'. My club has also used controls of 'Owl' and 'Mushroom'. Perhaps the most unusual control I have experienced was a few years back when at a small event in another region. There had apparently been a very last minute land permission withdrawal, so they had hastily amended two controls in one corner to be one control labelled as 'Manned control' - which was a disgruntled looking bloke just over the brow of a hill holding a kite in one hand and a punch in the other... What really unusal control features have other people come across?

[Wayward-O]

The spectator control at the Peter Palmer Junior Relay a few years ago was a garden gnome in the middle of a field with a large bunch of metallic balloons attached!

[awk]

The spectator control at the Peter Palmer Junior Relay a few years ago was a garden gnome in the middle of a field with a large bunch of metallic balloons attached!

He's now happily retired and has been enjoying the sun in our garden today!

[Tatty]

At Army events recently we had a control on a helicopter, whereas at the local Agricultural College we had a statue of a wild boar - a Hampshire Hog. Seem to recall having a plastic duck float in a bowl of water. Think Siggy Gould was responsible for that.

[IanD]

Final control at the Canadian World Masters Final was a 10ft high carving of a bear!

The recent Lossiemouth event had a retired fighter aircraft as a control site. It was right by the start, and we were wondering how it would be mapped and described. No-one in my conversation group came up with the mapper's solution, which was an underpass! (light grey on an ISSOM map). Absolutely appropriate, you could run underneath it (provided you bent down and avoided the wheels). The control description of 'covered passage' didn't really do the feature justice though.

I remember a major relay some years ago (I think in Thetford Forest) where the assembly/change-over area was in a clearing. The last control was just inside the clearing. It was manned by someone with a radio, who was speaking the numbers of the incoming runners into his radio, so that this information could be relayed to those waiting in the changeover pen.

Anyway, this official was provided with a shelter, which looked just like a toilet tent - indeed, probably was a toilet tent without the toilet. No other control feature was obvious to the spectators. This led to some discussion as to what the correct IOF pictorial description would be for 'toilet tent, manned'!

[Clive Coles]

I suppose it was only a Bank holiday fun score event but I remember having to chase a pink moose that was grazing "somehere on the heath".

He ( or was it a she ) moved away when approached ~ I guess from the speed must have been an elite runner inside !. They obviously didn't attempt to map this as a mobile control.

[King Penguin]

Tree junction, on top of - at Coombe Abbey a few years ago. About 10 ft climb required up a sloping fallen tree.

[AndyC]

My club has also used controls of 'Owl' and 'Mushroom'.

I'll confess I was that planner and I forced/asked dusty to map them for me.
NN's traditional Boxing Day event in Chopwell Woods (now I believe defunct due to access issues) always had "Christmas Tree" (and later "Son of Christmas Tree") in its descriptions. (Plus "Holly Bush")

On my first ever event as a planner-master maps and handwritten but photocopied Control Descriptions- I was appropriately ticked off for using the "non-approved" description of "inlet". I felt justified when one runner, having failed to mark it from the master map, found it by description and flow of the course alone.

[epocian]

EPOC had two moving 'Father Christmas' at their Christmas Score (they dished out chocolates if you managed to find them) and a moving 'Scrooge' - the reward for finding him was a humbug!