Beaudesert

[buzz]

Ah, but Charlie had had a ten minute rest earlier in the course.

Don't no about Charlie but I must have run about 1k further in my attempts to find 151.

[buzz]

Having said earlier that giving up after 7 minutes looking for 151 didn't spoil my enjoyment of the event, reading the self congratulatory comments of the controller and planner HAS.

It would be great if anyone who knows John Warren or Andy Yeates could point them at this forum and ask them to explain why they chose to use this control site so that others can learn from their mistakes.

All the other courses I've seen looked excellent and they've clearly worked very hard - so what went wrong with 151?

[Pete_Bog]

I reckon on that leg you start on the tracks/paths, but leave yourself the option of turning off into the forest, if when you get there it looks ok. The tracks weren't too muddy, but the forest was mostly fast, even the light green, so Charlie's straight(er) line route was good.

He must have been following my tracks... but much faster! The advantage of using the tracks to begin with was that it gave chance to assess the green and it was slightly uphill so a little easier to keep pace. The SW track had become quite muddy so it seemed better to run the forest rather than loose the height and run further.

This leg was also run by courses 5, 6, 9 and 10 and there was a similar leg on courses 7, and 11. So there were a lot of runners on these tracks mid event. I was surprised how tracked the routes between controls had become until I checked routegadget and saw how similar many of the courses were.

My only disappointment was the none appearance of the Butchers Grill, so we headed off to the pub down the road for a magic carvery for £3.50!

A very enjoyable event with economical planning!

[Red Adder]

Its interesting to compare the map with one I ran on in one of my earliest ever events 32 years ago. The area seems to have less rhodos now - and also less pits. The start was from the car park by the 2nd north arrow in from the west - the block to the NE of that had about 55 small depressions (shown as brown "V"s with orientation whatever way the cartographer fancied - one pair look like <>). He had also mapped oodles of depressions in rhodo blocks - that must have been a labour of love.

The 1977 finish would be fun now - up through the very green ridge at the north of the map. And the course had the complete no-no that you never see nowadays - in a forest with seemingly tons of features in every block the plannerstill used a map correction for #6. All I actually remember of the event is trying to hurdle a fallen tree on the way to first control - clipping the top of it and doing a face plant in the marsh on its far side - my non-orienteering lady-friend at the time found this hillarious.

[Mrs H]

My only disappointment was the none appearance of the Butchers Grill, so we headed off to the pub down the road for a magic carvery for £3.50!

The Butchers Grill did turn up but their generator failed and they had to leave much to their regret.

[geomorph]

Thanks for the leg analysis.

Peter Bray (M18L) just outperformed even Charlie, and did it on the longer 'z' across the red line (about 200m longer) but then the legs of youth, eh . Charlie took quite a gamble on the LG, but then he had nothing to lose by then, and he is a very powerful runner off-track

The M16 winner, William Gardner, chose the vegetation boundary route on the opposite side of the red line from Charlie, but it looks like it cost him a up to minute.