Miserable Whinge

[Kitch]

Its just bad form

[DesignatedDriver]

from what i can make out (i couldn't make it to the event) it was enjoyed by the majority of people.

[graeme]

Maybe I'm just cynical, but it didn't sound like a world class area to me. Rock features rare enough to merit an exclamation mark, and mapped features like "trees in the forest". In fact, it was better than I expected from the publicity (but then, I went to the last BOC down there at Charlton).

Here's what they said about it...

All the individual courses will visit Furnace Wood. This area contains an extensive network of paths and fields with pockets of woodland in between. There is a steep scarp slope running through this area.

The longer individual courses will visit Woolbeding Common. This in an area of fast heathland with much ground detail.

Courses 1, 2, 3 and 5 and all the relay courses will visit Great Common which is wooded, less steep than Furnace Wood and contains pockets of land with complex ground detail.

Terrain

Together Furnace Wood, Woolbeding and Great Commons provide a varied range of orienteering experiences. The physical challenge of a 100m scarp slope; high visibility heath land with intricate ground detail; mature, flat, pine forest and for some courses a first chance to visit Great Common ahead of the Relays. Some parts of the area are brashed and where this is heavy the terrain is mapped with vertical green hatching. Large rhododendron bushes are mapped as thickets whereas individual holly bushes are not. Larger expanses of holly are mapped with the difficult to run screen, unless they are so thick as to warrant the impassable screen. On Woolbeding Common large patches of gorse are mapped as thickets with smaller patches mapped as scattered trees. The individual tree symbol is usually used to depict a yew tree or a tree with a girth and height considerably greater than the surrounding trees. A large part of the area has seen mining activity in the past and as a result there is much ground detail, where this has been impossible to map, the broken ground symbol has been used. Forestry work is ongoing in Furnace Wood in particular and many extraction lanes have been created, in most cases these have not been mapped except where they have taken on the appearance of a more permanent path.

Relay

The area lies on the southern slope of the main east-west Greensand ridge, with gentle contours incised by two deeper re-entrants. As with the Woolbeding Common area to the west (seen by many during the Individual races), there are areas of intricate contour and ground detail associated with the extraction of ore - look out for boulders, cairns and boulder fields! There are a number of deeper excavations, three of which are mapped as crags. These are genuine and represent hazards. These will be approached from below but, notwithstanding this, we will tape the top edges with black/yellow marker tape – do not cross this.

The area is entirely tree-covered with predominantly commercial woodland – chestnut coppice in the west, younger pine plantation in the north, and faster open mature pine to the east. The coppice is actively harvested – indeed there has been considerable recent extraction this month. This (and last) year’s extraction sites have been mapped as open land with a fight undergrowth screen. Passage through these areas is possible, but not for the fainthearted. Elsewhere, conventional runnability screens have been used. The course lengths give an indication of assumed running speeds – this is not a fast southern forest.

[NeilC]

I wasn't at BOC1994
I volunteered to be lead planner for BOC2006
I visited the designated area (Charlton)
I cried
I lobbied hard to get Woolbeding approved instead
It could have been so much worse.......

[tim sleepless]

That description is pretty accurate in retrospect...

[guest]

looking at the poll votes I want to know where's the missing 1% - or are they spoilt votes?

Yes it was tough but the planning was very good - made you think about the route choices, height on slopes etc. I really enjoyed the relay - short, fast everything a relay should be with potential to make mistakes when tired at the end in the tricky bit.

Thanks to SEOA - they must all be exhausted after 2 major events in consecutive years.

[tendon]

That description is pretty accurate in retrospect...

It was pretty acccurate when we wrote it

[tim sleepless]

That description is pretty accurate in retrospect...

It was pretty acccurate when we wrote it

Smartarse!

[guest]

Thanks to SEOA - they must all be exhausted after 2 major events in consecutive years.

... not to mention JK2008, now less than 2 years away.

Long-term fixtures planning seems a little awry.

[Kitch]

Now that I've had my tea
apologies to Hocolite

[HOCOLITE]

Thanks Kitch. I just longed for the large area of mining activity and was disappointed not to see it and almost certainly cock it up. I saw that and the map extract and expected something like some of the Forest of Dean Mining areas. As I cocked up my very straight forward 1st leg how would I have coped with this moon scape I thought I'd find? Having read Neil's comment about Charlton Forest we looked back at compass sport and looked at the photos and descriptions for it. It was described as a fast but physical runnable area. However the brashings looked worse than any I encountered at the weekend. As I said I didn't run on the relay but the area looked good and fun, I would probably enjoyed getting lost.