Organiser's Comments
Thank you for attending this years November Classic, we hope you had an enjoyable day.
This years Classic proved challenging for both organisers and planners not least due to the loss of the original event Centre. The second choice also was unavailable and at a very late date we managed to secure New Park which had its logistical challenges. My thanks to Tara and her team at New Park who made the use of the venue such a good option. Crossing the A337 was a challenge but Chevron Traffic Management and their on the day operative Carter made that work well.
Because of the late securing of New Park this gave planners Mark Light and Paul Thwaites a number of difficulties. They had to re plan their courses a number of times dependent on the varying starts and finish options. The extremely hot conditions and time of year for planning also did not help their planning timetable.
Despite a number of glorious days and a parking field occupied by a herd of about 40 deer along with a number of unpredictable stags we arrived, on the day, to a misty New Park and no deer!
That leaves us to thank Charles Daniel for controlling, the planning team along with the 50 or so volunteers who turned out before and during the event. Without these volunteers we would have had no Orienteering Event.
Nick and Claire.
Planner's Comments
Hollands Wood is not a technically complex area, but it does offer a variety of terrain from wonderful open runnable woodland through to dense conifers on gently undulating countryside. With limited technical control sites, Paul Thwaites and I aimed to create courses that offered multiple route choices where at all possible, some of which may not have been quite so obvious as others. We enjoyed planning on the area, and sincerely hope that everyone who competed enjoyed running the courses. There certainly seemed to be a lot of enthusiastic post-race discussion around decisions that were made out there, which seemed to suggest that we had succeeded.
We would like to thank Charles Daniels who, as usual, put in a lot of time and effort to ensure that this Classic continued to meet the high standards of those had preceded it. Our Forest Team were invaluable, and without whom the controls would not have been set out and collected in within the time constraints we were working under; Simon Bevan, Henny Dunn, Tim Gray, Colin Hicks, Lisa James, Julia Jarvis, Nick Jarvis, Steve Jarvis, Louise Light, Terry Smith, and Andy Snell. Finally we would like to thank Simon Bevan who put in a considerable amount of time completely surveying and remapping the event area to provide a clear map to for us to plan with and competitors to use on the day.
Mark Light
