Spey 2007 - Comments

[rob f]

Ok so another scottish is over, what did you like and dislike?

For me

Likes
* Anagach, fantastic orienteering, most ive enjoyed orienteering in the UK since 2005, possible my favourite scottish day ever (although i enjoyed roseisle in 03)
* The Locals, always helpful, fully supportive of orienteering.
* The planning on West Inshriach was fantastic, well done to the planners for keeping my mind thinking from the second i reached the start triangle to the sight of the finish.
* The Toilets, fantastic job done on them so they were always clean, round of applause to all
* The Buses (apart from day 3, see below) the drivers were fantastic, enthusuastic and helpful, i missed them on the last two days, and the service was efficient, and i never missed the start nor had too much time.
*Athletes Angels, the massagers, were superb, and really helped my run on day 5 and 6 be much faster

Dislikes
* The buses on day 3 were scheduled an hour too late, meaning we had to drive to get to our start, on an area which was supposed to have limited car parking.
*The lack of organization. Before the event i sent an email to change to 20 long, and several to try and cancel a tent pitch, none of which happened. The bibs were equally confusing, and surely someone should have checked that one bib was correct before printing all 3700 or so.
* The leisure centre. We were told about these £5 week passes, but then the pool was rarely open at times conveniant to orienteers. The showers were cold and packed for later starters on the first 2 days, yet they had more showers avaliable which we used later in the week, and they had refused to open them
*The campsite, in respect to those not in the youth area, on certain nights we in the youth area were a bit loud, and there was little way of seperating the noise from the quiet area, as it was an open hillside. That could have been solved by either having the youth campsite further down the hill, or the quiet area further down the hill. The lack of drinking water also meant that we spent over £4 on bottled water, which is a lot compared to the cost of our meals. And of course when finished we couldnt recycle anything, as no facilities were provided. This years campsite wasnt a shade on 2005's.

[Tatty]

Great week all round - apart from some of the weather. Good planning most days. Car Parking was very well done, under difficult circumstances. Lots of Food traders meant the queues at Wilf's weren't quite as long as usual - only 20 minutes on average
Must agree with Rob that the service at the loos was fantastic. They were always clean, never ran out of paper, and although the queues were long it never took very long.
The people of Grantown were fantastic. Speaking to the Library staff, who were snowed under with requests to go on the Internet, they were very pleased to have us. Shops such as the Coop stayed open until 10pm, thay had plenty of bananas and broadsheet papers.
As the the Friday night ceiledh - what an atmosphere. The band were great, especially the caller. The fact thet he'd never had so many people dancing from aged 7 to 70 was a credit to us all.
A hard act for a town/area to follow
Having been to all 16, I felt that the atmosphere here was excellent. I know there were problems for those who camped, which is why I always rent a cottage

[andy]

From an organisers point of view it went very well.

A few hiccups are always inevitable, the weather didn't help the campsite but lots of people worked really hard to keep it running as it did, same with the Day 2 parking field which was a mire by the time I left at 5ish.

The bib issue(s) could have been avoided (as Rob f says) - they were not double checked.
The pool and leisure centre were meant to be open longer, as per our arrangement, but things didn't quite go as we expected there....

The areas (and course planning) were fantastic, I didn't run on Day 5 but the other 5 days were outstanding and it's been a year or more since I've run on areas like these.

From a computing point of view everything went very smoothly. There were rarely queues and only a handful of problems with some EOD runners/changes not being assigned to the correct courses (Day 1 primarily). Results went up online fairly promptly. I was pleased I didn't have to tell too many people they had simply mispunched by not holding their SI Card in the station for long enough!

bring on Tay 2009

[DB]

Well done to the organisers. Apart from the minor problem with the bib timings the event itself went very well.

Likes...
Well planned and challenging courses. A knee injury prevented me from competing on Anagach, everyone says i missed probably the best day. I thoroughly enjoyed Culbin and Balavil.
Well done for the Helian portaloos, clean & well stocked with rolls and handwashing
Car parking was quick and efficient on every day, in somewhat inclement weather.
Enjoyed the training run on Alvie Moor on arrival on the Saturday.
Assembly was always well set up, plenty of space for the club tents and for the traders.
Took part in the MTB event and the Kingussie on the day off and a great day in great weather.
Echo the comments about the Grantown locals, all kind and friendly.
JJ's restaurant in town was superb.

Dislikes...
Noisy campsite. We elected for the quiet area but could always hear noise from the marquee area of the site after 11pm.
Struggled with the 1:15000 maps (I know the scale is the IOF standard but most other events i do is 1:10000). The wavy contour lines on the first few controls on the Inshriach map didn't have any contour tags and i found it extremely difficult telling up from down on the map.


All in all a great event (my first Scottish6) and look forward to Tay 2009.

[EddieH]

As most know the day teams change from day to day. How many know that the equipment team work every day. They set up and dismantle the site each day and transport all the hardware to the next site. This involves working till late every night and being there early every morning. Oh and they are unpaid volunteers!!!

I think they are the most marvellous of all the amazing volunteers that put on this biennial event.

[The Cumbrian]

Thanks to all the many helpers/planners/organisers for a very enjoyable 6-days your work was much appreciatd by many
Likes:
Heilan loos - a fantastic job, clean, well stocked and a fast moving queue
Fuss free arrival/pre/post orienteering experience every day except Balavil (see below)
Race bibs (apart from the out of step start times)with all the relevant info - course/start etc
The fantastic areas except Camerory which was at best average

Dislikes
Entry to the car park field on day 2 - yes it was muddy but did everybody need stopped to be told that! Resulting in a queue nearly back to the A9 junction...
Having around 750m Orange course at the end of Day 2 course 22.

Tay2009 will have a massive job on its hands to beat Spey 2007

[HOCOLITE]

LIkes-
Toilets top notch. Even on camp site they were clean and not smelly.
O areas brilliant except not keen on Day 1 as we got some pretty rough bits although I gather other areas were better. Thought Cameroy was a waste of time very rough, long walks not justified.
Grantown a great host town, similar to Kingussie.
Day organisation pretty good.
Spey Merchandise pretty attractive too.
Dislikes-
Cameroy as stated.
Camp site- Marquee provided great but campers not allowed in until the evening and some told they could not eat in there. No evening entertainment apart from quiz
Results not posted on camp site, (later on three lap tops available) but hardly adequate for demand.

Other areas for possible improvement- camp site and event centre co-located if possible, caterer on camp site, greater shower provision if possible, at Crathes there were options of locations of showers so it was possible to drive to get a less crowded and warmer shower.
Wet weather contingency plan for camp site so mess created by rain could be minimalised.

[PeteL]

we couldnt recycle anything, as no facilities were provided.

The absence of recycling facilities at the events was down to Highland Council deciding not to provide facilities. To be fair to them, the cost of collecting recyclables in the Highlands, outside of Inverness, is astronomical. Estimates of the cost of collecting and transporting plastic bottles to the closest reprocessing points in England is approx. £1000/tonne.

One of the (few!) downsides of being in such a rural area, I'm afraid.

The Spey 2007 Team are having a wash-up meeting in early September, I'll keep an eye on this thread and feed your comments in.

[HOCOLITE]

With the exception of plastic there were recycling bins in the car park in Grantown.

[Steve]

Likes:
- all the areas
- all my courses
I liked Cameroy. I heard adverse comments, but the control count on my course was lowest that day meaning we had some decent long-ish legs, and they often went into areas without nearby attack / relocation features so the technical difficulty was there. Personally I'm happy with rough going underfoot, it takes the edge off the speed of the course leaders and gives me a chance to score a few more points.

Also, Speyside was a superb area of Scotland to visit. We stayed on the Glenmore campsite, in the midst of wonderful forest, loch, and mountain scenery.

Dislikes:
- the rain
- the cold
- the midges
But it won't stop me entering for 2009

My only serious dislike was the overcrowded pre-start area at Alvie and the small start boxes there. Also, having 2 start kites from the same start caused confusion for one junior in my start minute, and possibly for others at other times.

[PeteL]

Steve (and others at the Red/White Start at Alvie),

Apologies for the inadequate set up. I didn't check the size of the start boxes when they were laid out - my mistake; if I had I would have made them bigger. The general location for the Start wasn't ideal but I do know that the planners had great difficulties trying to give you courses that used the best of the area, mostly avoided large areas of bracken and minimised deer fence crossings.

We did try to make the two kites set-up clear to competitors with signs at pre-starts, separating the White start lane from the Red and taping from the map boxes to the relevent Start Kite but the congestion in a very tight area resulted in more confusion than was necessary. Lesson learned and will be part of my post-match report.

Pete
Day 1 Organiser

[EddieH]

As Steve I liked Camerory (My course was excellent and had no wrong control). I loved all the areas, but most importantly I love the variety. Where else in the World do you get 6 (7 with the sprint) areas which are so totally different?

That is the Scottish 6 days greatest asset.

[Gross]

Where else in the World do you get 6 (7 with the sprint) areas which are so totally different?

That is the Scottish 6 days greatest asset.

And I'm sure 2009 will be just as varied. Donald seems to have got away from Tayside plantation & used imagination.... from Kinnoull Hill in Perth to the sand dunes of the mostly 'orienteered on by very few' sand dunes at Barry Buddon:)

[Oldman]

My thoughts using similar format to others'

Good
- varied areas (Camerory excellent although I made errors - a tough run in the rough heather followed by the almost free of obvious line features forest was great! Anagach not so good due to inadequacy of white area mapping: some bits were runnable, others much harder than the light green due to heather - route choice sometimes a lottery)
- good parking/assembly areas (even if we did have to queue on the A9 one day due to the mudslide field entrance)
- good sprint race (although I saw two foreign competitors nearly go under a timber lorry, and others go directly through olive green areas!)
- good toilets (sad to mention that, isn't it? But they were, due to good regular servicing)

Not so good
- cramped starts, with signs unable to be seen, lanes too small, confusion over where the start kite was, jostling at the timed start line, etc
- bib times (alhtough other info including font used was excellent, and they were robust)

Well done, everybody involved!

[HOCOLITE]

Pete L
Re Alvie start I was an early start on the blue/white start. I was told the start kite was down the track so went down the track a trifle confused to find I had to climb a bank and cross the red starters. After the event I inspected the triangle to find it was in fact the red start. There were others in the same boat although I gather later competitors were directed to the red triangle. Why weren't we just told on day 1 we were at red start? Surely this would have been simpler.