Planners’ report

Quote from the planners’report on the last event on hanging moor (December 1991) – “Hanging Moor is an awkward area to plan on, being rather too small for a good length on the Brown and Blue whilst having the most interesting bits a good distance from the best car park. We tried to give everybody on the technical courses a go at the old quarries even though this meant some heather bashing to get there. Finishing times were a bit short for the Brown and Blue, but no one was heard to complain after two trips round the moor.”

 Not much change there then! Same old moor, same old planners and same old outcome except that this time the winning time on the Blue was a bit more respectable with only six runners breaking the hour and the bulk of the competitors around 70 minutes. The Brown was clearly too short with most competitors back under 70 minutes and a winning time of  45 minutes - we’ll make it three times round next time. The other two technical courses look  about right to us (although we would have liked the Short Green to be shorter!).

 Whilst on the subject of Short Green courses it was very pleasing to be thanked so many times by older competitors who had enjoyed some technical orienteering without having to reach the limit of their physical powers and the number of competitors opting for the Short Green shows the level of demand here – we recommend it to anyone else planning in YHOA in the coming months. It was Judith  who insisted on having a Short Green but Mike is very glad to be associated with the kudos despite having spent most of the planning grumbling about “trying to do TD5 orienteering in PD1 terrain”.

 Another quote from 1991 – “The options for planning the less technical courses were fairly limited because of the dearth of line features. The Orange was probably rather hard work as it climbed out onto the moor through the bracken, but the Yellow and White stayed safely in the wood.” Again not a lot of change there! Competitors all seemed to be enjoying themselves which was our main aim although the Orange was probably a bit on the long side. The Light Green was a bit of a novelty in 1991 but this year the course almost planned itself apart from an original idea which involved the end of a ditch which had completely disappeared in the intervening years.

 Two other constants from 1991 were the quality of the organiser and controller with Tim Moon doing a very thorough job (well up to the high standards set by Mike Calvert 20 years ago) and once again we had a “Rolls Royce” among controllers in Tony Carlyle who, like David Roach before him, guided us gently and reassuringly through the event.

 So that’s it then – it will be the orienteering quiz question of all time – “Which area had only two events on it in twenty years, both with same planners and both with a grade 1 Controller despite being only Colour Coded events?”