Spey 2007 - Comments

[DB]

We had it at both ends of the night in the supposed 'quiet area', late noise from the marquee and early whining children. Added to that a couple of nearby snorers makes for little sleep. Little you can do about the latter but i'm less than 50/50 about using the official camp site next time.

[awk]

As Technical Co-ordinator for Tay 09 I'd appreciate any (constructive) comments on courses at Spey 07. You can send me these by email if you don't want them public! (Please give your course number when commenting).

Overall, I thought like others here that Speyside was a brilliant week - organisation, forests etc. were all excellent. I'm glad you've asked for this Dave, because unlike some others here, I thought the area for greatest improvement was the quality of courses. I hesitate to say 'the planning' because I appreciate that planners are all too often constrained by all sorts of things which we don't see directly, e.g. number of courses, designated out of bounds etc. etc., but, given the quality of the forests, I did feel that rather too many of the courses didn't live up to expectations.

To be more specific (I'm mostly talking course 18 ), and starting with the best:

Anagach and Culbin: excellent courses making good use of the areas - they are brilliant areas, but could still have been spoiled however they weren't! Unlike others, I've not always enjoyed Anagach, but this was an exemplar of quality planning; I particularly 'enjoyed' (I lost most of my time here through tiredness!) the sting in the contrasting tail!

Now to the others:
Alvie: looked like there were some major restrictins, but a lot of controls with either very big catching features immediately before or placed on the approach side of features (especially on the shortest legs) meant that this course was technically not as enjoyable as those I've experienced on Alvie before.

Balavil: an excellent last two-thirds, but the the first (long) leg straight through the birch out to an obvious feature across the heather moorland, followed by two very simple turning controls, was disappointing.

Uath Lochan: controls 1 (although visible from miles away), 3, 4 and 7 were fine, the rest were of little technical interest. This looked as if the start was in the wrong place, leading to all sorts of constraints; but also looked as if a corridor had been imposed? The W50S (can't remember the number) was mostly TD3 and left my wife spitting teeth in frustration.

Camerory: a good first three controls, and then disappointing except for control 9, but even that was placed just beyond a humungous catching feathure. The course after 9 was just an easy 2k or so run in to the finish, what a waste of what looked like an excellent forest (especially control 10 - what was the thinking here??). This course contrasted massively with the next one up (M40S, W40L), which looked to be everything I wished our course had been.

Hope that helps.

[Mrs H]

I've been meaning to say how much I enjoyed the daily news letter - i looked forward to reading it every day and think it considerably enhances the S6D experience - well done to the editors

[DM]

We had it at both ends of the night in the supposed 'quiet area', late noise from the marquee and early whining children. Added to that a couple of nearby snorers makes for little sleep. Little you can do about the latter but i'm less than 50/50 about using the official camp site next time.

With 3 sprogs we chose the family area, the noise from the "youth" area was not too bad for us, I learnt a few new verses to some songs on the Tuesday night at about 1 am before I drifted off to sleep.

Biggest problem was some prat warming the tent up with their stove at full blast and discussing in loud voices their work affairs at around 6 am most mornings and giving Elizabeth hell for not getting dressed........

[DM]

We had it at both ends of the night in the supposed 'quiet area', late noise from the marquee and early whining children. Added to that a couple of nearby snorers makes for little sleep. Little you can do about the latter but i'm less than 50/50 about using the official camp site next time.

Depends how close they are, if they are in the same tent kick them, worked for me

[rosco]

awesome racing.

[Oldman]

Apologies if this is elsewhere on Nopesport, but the STV video of the Scottish 6 days, referenced on the Spey 2007 web site, deserves a bigger audience:

http://www.scotlandontv.tv/?channel=Spo ... 380_SMG962

[andy]

Apologies if this is elsewhere on Nopesport, but the STV video of the Scottish 6 days, referenced on the Spey 2007 web site, deserves a bigger audience:

http://www.scotlandontv.tv/?channel=Spo ... 380_SMG962

yep, i watched it last week and was pleasantly surprised, it's really good