Apologies to any juniors who had a bad time - please believe that I did try to get the courses right! And to help the learning curve: we are about to adopt 2 children so hopefully next time I will have a better understanding of juniors...
I actually used the BOF documents refered to earlier and found the instructions and examples harder than I normally planned, and I maybe have overcompensated a bit. Another factor was a number of last minute changes which maybe meant that some legs were checked enough. And then when one leg is too hard the whole course moves up a TD level.
One of the challenges in this area was translating the guidelines to an unusual terrain. I found I was replacing 'contour' with 'vegetation' in the descriptions (i.e. using detailed vegetation info in TD 5 and not in TD4) - and this translation did not always work.
I think one of the things that went wrong was that I did not compensate enough for difficult line features. For example, the leg between control 7 and 8 on the yellow has 2 decision points: control 7 is visible from the forest road, and helps them onto the vegetation boundary. The first decision point is where this meets the fence and they turn left, and the second is where the vegetation boundary turns right. (or alternatively the stream). Control 8 then helps them onto the ride.
However, recognising unusual line features on the map and in the terrain takes experience, and in a way this adds another decision to each decision point.
I didn't fully realise how difficult the rides are if you are only used to "normal" big paths. I did try to compensate, sometimes by cutting branches away from the opening of the ride to make it more obvious, and sometimes by having a control at the beginning of the ride.
Someone earlier mentioned taped legs: both the white and yellow had a fair amount of tapes and comments.
In the white, the start of leg 3 was taped until the start of the path after the tree, and the whole leg from 9 to 10 (the re-entrant - linear ditch was not very good). Leg 4 wasn't a great line feature but we made sure control 4 was visible from control 3 to help. The route between 6 and 7 had some black and yellow tapes for safety. Also from the last control to the finish was taped.
In yellow there was a note not to cross the stream until the lake on leg 4 (I wasn't sure everybody would recognise the stream as a line feature). The next leg then was taped from the lake to the start of the ride, taking them through a crossing point in the wall.
(this was shared by orange and long orange as well).
Originally the courses followed the fence W instead of heading S to the lake, but we felt the crossing of the stream at that point was not safe for juniors. As it was fairly dry that weekend it may have been fine but we didn't want to take the risk.
The start of leg 6 was then taped to the fence.
It helps if people can point out specific points rather than a general "this was too hard". If anything, I hope this helps other planners in their courses!
Roos
ps I may not be able to reply again soon, rooms to paint and children to meet!
But it's not something I've seen organisers encouraging.
