Results can be found HERE during the event.

NEW: String Course Results for all days can be found HERE

Results on RouteGadget can be found HERE

JK 2010 Organiser’s Comments – by Erik Peckett

The JK might be likened to a train.  This one started off in 2006 when SWOA agreed to stage the 2010 JK.  It was never my intention to stay on board but I could not get off.  Fortunately I had surrounded myself with a good team.  I would like to particularly thank Christine Vince - she originally agreed to help with the entries but took over a lot of the administration tasks.

Along the way the train acquired a few carriages.  Some contain the Planners, Controllers, Race Day Managers and Mappers for individual days.  Others had the Team Leaders who persuaded others to join their teams for tasks such as Starts and Results that would take place each day.  A particularly valuable member was Pat Macleod and his team who looked after the provision of equipment needed to run each day.

On the way we lost one carriage when we found that we could not use Exeter University campus for the Sprint due to a change in the dates of term.  Fortunately I was drawing a map of Bicton College at that time and they were persuaded to allow us to use their campus.  I then redrew the map to the Sprint specifications.

We were nearly derailed on our way to Braunton when the Land Agent for the Estate held us to ransom by threatening to cancel the event just a week before.  The payment of a large sum of money averted this disaster.  Our thanks to Peter Brett for handling these stressful negotiations.

Eventually our train arrived at Bicton.  A sad day.  We will miss Dave and our sympathy goes to Katy and their family for their loss.  Our thanks must go to those who stopped to render first aid.

Onto Cookworthy - sorry about the rain.  Funnily a few competitors said that the area “was not as bad as they expected”.  This covered in mud, sweat and rain water.

Braunton Burrows provided a contrast to the first two areas as might have been expected.  This last stop proved to be tricky for most but some ran with great skill to conquer all.

The advent of RouteGadget means that people like me can enjoy exploring the way you ran round the areas on your courses.  Planners and Controllers also find it interesting – did you go the way they predicted.  Try and put your routes on the maps; it is good fun especially if you can set the animation going.

One of the perks of being the JK Organiser is that a large number of you came to thank me for the event and I have passed on these to the real workers.

An event like this needs a lot of individuals to help the Team Leaders.  Thank you SWOA for your support.

I would like to mention the contribution made by the SW Junior Squad under their manager Jeff Butt.  They undertook to help with the car parking and collecting controls after the event.  I was impressed, when I went into the Forestry yard at Cookworthy after the Day 2 event had finished, at their enthusiasm as they waited to go out in to that wet, muddy forest to collect the controls.  They were back very quickly and helped the planners tidy up.  Well done to them.  With that enthusiasm there is great hope for the future of orienteering in this country.  The planners on all Days much appreciated their help.

One last group to thank - that of the JK Committee who met some 13 times in the past 4 years, wrote reams of e-mails and documents, to make sure that we put on as well organised a JK as was possible.  My thanks to them for their support.

A couple of gripes.

The collection of litter can be a problem.  It requires a lot of man power and the disposal is costly.  We decided to ask you the participants to take away your own litter.  This almost worked.

But I did have to ask some of the SWOA Junior squad to help me tidy up the car park field at Braunton on Sunday.  This they did willingly but I think they share my concern that some of you are not so committed.  Our thanks to those that helped to clean up after the relays on the Monday.  We have a reputation to maintain.

All the helpers are volunteers.  I was disappointed to learn of the behaviour from a few drivers on the car parking areas at Bicton and Cookworthy.  The helpers are only trying to help you – please give them the support they deserve.

Guests
During the weekend we were pleased to welcome a number of Guests.

Day 1  Bicton College:         Sir John Cave Bt, DL  Vice Lord Lieutenant of Devon
He is also Patron of Devon OC and a Governor of Bicton College

Day 2 Cookworthy Forest:   Mr Martin Webb, Chief Forester for West Devon
Mr Paul Johnson, Graphic Artist (he designed the JK 2010 logo)

Day 3  Braunton Burrows:    Mr Eric Dancer, Lord Lieutenant of Devon

Day 4  Braunton Burrows:    Major General Nick Vaux CB DSO, President of Devon OC

Our thanks to them for coming.

Our train has finished its journey - we just have to tidy up the carriages and clean the engine.  But another one like it is now on its way to Northern Ireland for JK 2011.  Good luck to it.

Erik Peckett 
10th April 2010

Images from Day 1 online HERE

Day 1 Organisers Comments by John Rye

We were fortunate enough to find Bicton College in East Devon as the competition venue for the JK Sprint Race.  Organisationally Bicton seemed straightforward with a picturesque, even beautiful yet sheltered setting, good road access not far from the end of M5, a flat and quick-drying car park field, regularly used as such, a private estate with a helpful management and though not previously used, Erik Peckett had already surveyed and drawn a map.  And I live close by.  GB orienteer and Cornwall girl Helen Winskill (WCOC) was enlisted to plan and teamed up with brother Ian Hargreaves (KERNO).  Our Controller, Katy Stubbs (BKO), could be relied on to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Keen to create a great atmosphere to get the weekend off to a fine start, I designed a compact layout which kept the focus on the finish field (‘Between Roads’).  I wanted to maximise the opportunity to spectate either up to those approaching the final control or across to those enjoying an exhilarating run down to their first control in ‘Lake Field’, the imposing façade of Bicton House behind them.  Strong winds overnight and a dump of rain in the morning forced last minute amendment to the assembly field layout and made car parking more challenging – I was just glad the tents all stayed up.  During the competition the sunshine was only briefly interrupted by the odd shower. The proximity of the String course and the Temp-O set up just a stone’s throw away made them both very much an integral part of the event.  Youngsters were running just a fence apart from the elite and one of the Temp-O sites was on the periphery of the assembly field. 

We had over 1700 competitors running on 11 different courses.  Careful planning, clear mapping and on-the-day marking meant we had no reports of competitors using 'crossable uncrossables'.  There was a problem with one control box which was satisfactorily resolved.  A fair few mispunched.  Controls tend to be much closer together in sprint races and in the heat of furious competition, perhaps, some punched too fast for their punch to register.  Perhaps inevitably with the public holiday traffic some people were late for their start.  Their actual start times were recorded and in the event, because competitors received mixed messages at the start, and despite the stentorian warnings in the programme/final details, I allowed the race time of late starters to be calculated from the time they started rather than their allocated start time.  A protest resulting from an imperative temporarily to close a road in the competition area was considered but the Jury determined that no course should be voided.

While running in the M50 class, Dave Stubbs of Berkshire Orienteers collapsed and died.  Dave had orienteered for many years and was an active competitor, organiser and event controller.  I'm sure all JK competitors will wish to join in sending condolences to his wife Katy, herself the controller of the day’s racing.

For large events like the JK, the organiser's role is 90% co-ordinating and 10% doing. And so it is a pleasure to acknowledge the efforts of the equipment manager, Pat MacLeod, and the teams for parking, start, enquiries, finish/timing/download, commentary and PA, and assembly along with the Bicton College staff, particularly Jessica Oates, Paul Champion in person and as the Head Gardener and Paul Redmore the Farm Manager. You all made the organiser’s job very straightforward.  As the last to leave the site after 7pm the only trace of a successful competition was the muddy impact of thousands of hooves and a few wheels tracks – nothing a bit of time and Devon sunshine won’t sort out.  In these last 3 years the Sprint Race on Day 1 has matured into an integral part of the JK Festival of Orienteering.

Day 1 Planners’ Report – by Helen Winskill

Despite being located a large distance away from Bicton, I was flattered to be asked to plan the sprint by Erik.  As an ex-member of the SW region it was a pleasure to be involved with the organisation.  It became a family affair with both brothers having significant input; thanks to Ian as my general dogsbody and James for his tag / control hanging.

I would like to say a huge thank you to the team for JK Day 1 without which my job would have been so much harder; Katy for her fantastic advice and support as my controller, John for his superb organisation and calm approach and Erik for his ability to take terrain comments and rapidly translate them into an updated map file.  Also, thanks go to all the people behind the scenes for the SI and general equipment; Alan and Pat, as well as the SW squad for collecting in the controls.

Cheers to everyone for their positive comments about the courses, you're very kind!  I hope that the planning presented a few moments of thought.  My idea was that after the fast and furious parkland the college buildings would throw a few unsuspecting people off but I have to confess that I didn't expect the last controls to confuse as many as they did.  RouteGadget had shown that most of the routes chosen were as anticipated, so well done everyone!  I hope you all enjoyed yourselves.

One note of disappointment; until an area of planting was taped off, plenty of competitors crossed an out of bounds area (olive green) to access a control within sight of the start area.  I understand that the race format for some competitors new to Sprint may be confusing, but olive green is OOB on a standard orienteering map just as it is on a Sprint map.  Please take more time and care reading the map if necessary to avoid risking disqualification and future access agreements to the area.  Thank you!

Helen Winskill
Day 1 Planner

Day 1 Protest

Reason for protest:  Organiser blocking way on natural route choice sending runners about 200m extra.  Personally I lost concentration, made error, got angry which interfered with rest of course.  Demand class void.

Decision of the jury:  emergency services (Police and Ambulance) were called to respond to a serious injury to a competitor.  Because of the seriousness of the injury, a short stretch of road was closed for approx 3 min. by the emergency services.  Alternative routes were available, the shortest of which added 30-40m to the optimum route and may have confused those competitors affected.  From an analysis of the protester’s split times, his time loss on this leg was not sufficient to affect the leading places.  As only a few competitors were affected by the closure, in line with App I to Brit. Orienteering Rules, we see no reason to void course 4.

Images from Day 2 online HERE

Day 2 Organiser’s comments – by Carol Pearce

If only it hadn’t rained!  Not just on the morning of the event itself but on the Thursday (when the loos were being delivered) and on the Friday (when we were setting up the arena and the various walking routes).  We knew that the underlying geology at Cookworthy means that the area is boggy most of the time – hence our early decision to use forest tracks as hard standing for the car parking, even though this would mean a bus journey for many of you.  We were grateful for the use of the Devon Wildlife Trust’s yard - which I think everyone walked through at some point.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to use it for traders, so they – unlucky people - had the fun of negotiating the field.  We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the farmer, Colin Sanders, who turned out with his tractor on several occasions to get vans and trailers into the field and out again at the end.

My vision of a festival atmosphere in the field (colour/ flags/ excitement/ crowds etc) faded very quickly as competitors preferred to get back to their cars and to their dry clothes.  Hence the cancellation of the prize giving, but I think it was the right decision. 

There were things we could have done better of course, and I apologise to any competitors whose enjoyment of the day was marred by faults in the organisation.  These will be collated and forwarded to future JK organisers.

However, despite all that, it was really good to hear so many people saying how much they had enjoyed their orienteering in Cookworthy, and how the planners (Arthur Vince and Graham Pring) had found the nicer bits of the forest for them to go through.  Colin Duckworth controlled the event with a light touch and provided much wise support.

The Forestry Commission – and their rangers Glyn Bradbury and Martin Webb -  were very helpful from the outset, delaying harvesting operations, chopping back the trees that got blown down over the forest tracks and around control sites, and allowing us to use their building as a store room and control centre. 

As organiser I was dependent on the assistance of many people – including the SWOA equipment officer Pat Macleod, the car parking team under Jeff Butt, the bus management team, the Police and marshals who controlled the road crossing, my team of helpers who put up notices and tapes on all the walking routes from parking to Assembly and to the Starts; also the commentary and the first aid teams, and of course all those concerned with the technical aspects of the event.  On behalf of all the competitors, I am extremely grateful to all of them.

Day 2 Planners’ Report – by Arthur Vince and Graham Pring

Cookworthy Forest, with its limited path network and significant areas of young plantation, presented us with an interesting challenge, nevertheless it contains sufficient good orienteering terrain to excite us to take it on.

The trackbed of the old Okehampton to Bude railway posed a few problems in planning, as there were few sensible crossing places. With only one possible Finish and Assembly field, all courses apart from the two most junior ones had to pass through a 100m wide corridor to the north of the Blue start to reach the west end of the forest, which had a very high control density – as did the area to the NW of that start.  We hope that in spite of the wet ground, the difficulty in crossing muddy earth walls and the lack of contour features, you found the courses entertaining and challenging.

We used the speeds which Clive Hallett ran in previous events when winning M21L to get a distance for that course (Clive won M45L this time with 6.7mins/km). There was not much to go on when deciding the distances for the two elite Middle races. An educated guess was made, reckoning that no man would better 5.5 mins/km in that terrain. A calculation using the Classic race rules showed that the women should have a course 80% as long as the men. By good luck or judgement the winning times fell within the range required.

Dave Peel, our Elite Advisor, made comments on the draft courses 1 and 2 which led to the event versions being much better. Colin Duckworth, our Controller, pointed out some infelicities on other courses which led to them being improved.

We took the mean numbers on courses from the previous three JK's and entered them in the OCAD file to look at the use of control sites in order to avoid overloading. Nearer to the event we used the entry figures to decide where to have two SI boxes. This turned out to be two controls near the end of courses and five penultimate controls. We also separated the classes on courses 18 and 20 as given in the Event Rule, and gave M65L, and M70L/M60S, their own courses to avoid a potentially overcrowded start list.

Lastly and far from least, we thank the SW Junior Squad for collecting in controls. This was done with great speed in about an hour and a half, rather than the day it would have taken us.

Arthur Vince, KERNO     (Courses 1, 2, 17 to 31 and Colour-coded)
Graham Pring, KERNO (Courses 5 to 16)

Day 2 Controller’s Report – by Colin Duckworth

Cookworthy is clearly not an ideal location for a coniferous forest.  Every time the wind blows, some more trees fall over.  In addition to planning the courses, Arthur and Graham did a considerable amount of gardening, clearing routes through the worst bits and improving visibility.  The courses made the best use of the area and most people seemed to have enjoyed themselves, despite the mud.

We had a couple of SI boxes that stopped working and I went out into forest to replace one of them.  The area was looking distinctly second-hand by then.  Normally a late start is considered an advantage, but on this occasion I doubt that it was.

The weather could have been better.  Perhaps it was my fault because I amended the risk assessment form, which already had contingencies for bad weather, to include the possibility of hot weather.  If only.  It did brighten during the afternoon but, by then, most competitors had left.

The regular feedback from the management meetings made it clear that the organisation side was under control and I had no particular issues to worry about.  Carol and her team did a tremendous job in arranging the logistics of the event, setting up the assembly area and then running the event on the day itself, despite the mud.  It was unfortunate that the usual excited buzz about the assembly area was a casualty of the conditions.

After it was all over, we were left with three competitors who were unaccounted for.  Eventually, after checking round the car park that there were no empty cars and investigating the entries database to discover that they had all entered with at least one other person, we decided that they must have left without reporting to download.  Hopefully, they know who they are and will not do this again.

Colin Duckworth (TVOC)

Images from Day 3 online HERE

Day 3 Organiser’s comments – by Peter Brett

Well thank goodness that’s over!

While these are not the comment you would normally get from an event organiser they are heartfelt sentiments nonetheless, for while the competitors may have found the terrain challenging that was as nothing when compared to the challenges we discovered in finalising the permissions for the event.

Braunton Burrows, and much of the land surrounding it, are in the ownership of one large private estate.  The Burrows themselves are leased to the MoD for military training, while many of the surrounding fields are let for farming purposes.  This is a common enough arrangement where the various interests are best represented by a cake comprised of many layers.  However, the situation at Braunton we discovered is best represented by a marbled cake, but one where one flavour dominates all others.

Communication with the estate had not been easy, with letters taking up to 6 months to be replied to and phone calls not returned.  However, the underlying tone was positive so we went forward in the belief that permission had been given but that the Estate was not too bothered about the business opportunity an event such as the JK offered.

With just one month to go before Easter we received a letter from the Estate stating that there were many unresolved issues and that a meeting was required to resolve them.  Unfortunately the Agent was going on leave for two weeks and the meeting would have to await his return.  This meeting was finally held on March 24th.  It was evident from the outset that money was the primary, but not the sole, issue and although the meeting was cordial I needed to fight hard for the corner of orienteering as I knew the limited status of our finances.  The meeting concluded with apparent agreement on some of the issues and the Agent taking advice on others but with a promise of contacting me before the end of the day with a definitive position.  By 5 o’clock that evening we had received a phone call from the Agent stating that permission for the event had been withdrawn!

There then followed 24 hours of frantic activity, both by email and telephone, to discover the boundaries for negotiations and then negotiating with the Agent by phone.  The net result was that we held the event but only by using approximately 50% of the budget for the two days, or in other words incurring a major financial loss that had to be covered by any surplus from the other two days.

So if, when you approached me with a complaint, you felt that I was less than civil perhaps now you will understand why!

Finally, during the event I received a complaint from a competitor that turned into a formal protest.  The complainant contended that a particular control site was unfair as it was positioned close to a poorly mapped track that was the subject of a map correction in the start lanes.  The control was No 10 on course 10 (W40L/M40S).  A Jury was convened and the issue thoroughly discussed.  The Jury agreed with the organiser’s decision to reject the complaint as every attempt had been made to notify competitors of the shortcomings in the map.

Day 3 Planners’ Report – by Roger Hargreaves and Andy Reynolds

It should be easy to plan on Braunton Burrows as there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of potential control sites.  Andy and I split the planning workload with one of us working on the 1:15000 courses and TD1 to 4 courses, and the other working on the TD5 1:10000 set.  It isn't easy of course as we had to balance the various areas of the Burrows - flat and scrubby, flat and wet, hilly and technical and the northern area which only a few of the men's courses ventured into - largely untouched by dog walkers or the army or animals. 

We started with the "old" map which then evolved into the new maps we ended with.  The change in water was expected but the extent or variability not.  The vegetation too needed a remap as the intervening years - 2004 to the present - had seen an increase in the level of less passable stuff.  This was a challenge to the mappers, Brian Parker and John Pearce [both DEVON] who, partly guided by the extra eyes of planners, conducted the revision of the map.  As has been mentioned many times the army activity had also increased the number of tracks on site - up to and beyond the date at which revisions had to stop!  Many of you have commented that there should have been fewer of them - we think the proper balance was struck!

Mention should also be made of the input of the Elite Advisor, Dave Peel, whose light touch and advice was appreciated.  Extra thanks go to Tim Pribul, our BOF and IOF controller whose meticulous approach and advice was invaluable.  Not only that he was good fun to work with!

A fair weather day lifted the mood of the event and we were pleased with the generally upbeat comments overheard throughout the day.  We greatly appreciated the SW Junior Squad's efforts in control collection on such a large, technically difficult, area.

Finally, as this short note is written several routes are now up on Routegadget and it is fascinating to see how the route choices we might have taken, knowing where the sites are, were completely ignored!

Roger Hargreaves KERNO
Andy Reynolds DEVON

Day 3 Controller’s Report – by Tim Pribul

When Erik offered me the opportunity to control one of this weekend’s events back in 2008 it was not a difficult decision to make with Braunton Burrows being one of the areas on offer and having memories of JK97 at Penhale Sands.  One of the bonuses would be that journeys to the area would be 2 hours less!

It would be easy to make comparisons with a very successful event 13 years ago, but our sport has developed in many aspects, mostly technology based, and expectations and standards have been raised.  The challenge was therefore to balance the maintaining of quality with the ability and flexibility to make additional changes in both mapping and course planning to within a few weeks of the event.

In my ’12 months prior visit’ report in March 2009 I had noted that the water table was relatively low and other than the permanent ponds there was no lying water in the slacks and indeed as such they were very fast running.  There was some evidence of army vehicle activity over the dunes and I took a series of photos for Brian Parker which showed one stretch of dunes with deep parallel sanded tracks down the slope.  One could therefore be reasonably optimistic.  However, the intensity of traffic increased (the Army Jackals were on the terrain up to the Thursday evening before the event), the only benefit being the flattening of some of the bramble and thorn.  The decision had been taken from a survey and mapping point of view to map those tracks where the vegetation surface had been broken and bare sand was apparent and it would be unlikely to return to its former state by the time of our event.  In retrospect this may not have been the right decision, but the training needs for Afghanistan are obviously very great and required considerable manoeuvres on the terrain.  Many of you have said that the tracks could have been left off, but this of course creates a number of considerations in itself including the implicit one of fairness. 

So Roger and Andy had to contend with rising water levels and a continual proliferation of tracks whilst they planned their 34 courses and maintained the required technical difficulties.  Selected sites especially depressions seemed to attract the Jackal drivers and were therefore abandoned when our taping canes were crushed or obliterated under the heavy wheels.  We also had to contend with a well-meaning individual who cleared a significant proportion of our control tapes from the area.  Selected and agreed control sites which were subject to late Jackal attacks included 50, 165, 204.  In the immediate run-up to Easter the separate Colour Coded Start had to be abandoned due to it still being flooded, and stormy weather had caused a dune collapse at high water mark resulting in unstable terrain in the proximity of control 52.

My initial ‘arm chairing’ of the courses last September was in fact from the seat of a TGV passing through the Alps.  I did suggest a few tweaks to Roger and Andy at that time and hopefully this reflected the inspiration of the Alpine scenery passing by.  Additional visits to the Burrows and running many of the routes between controls added further refinements and avoided the worst of the thorn vegetation.  Many of you took time out to say how much you enjoyed your courses over this demanding terrain and all credit and congratulations to Roger and Andy for exploiting it.

Key in supporting me in my role was John Pearce who acted as my ‘local’ man on the ground and he also combined this with his mapping support role to Brian Parker.  The flexibility of the mapping team in speedily revisiting the area and resolving queries and adding refinements was very much appreciated by myself and the planners.

A controller cannot act entirely alone in the checking processes and family are drawn in to these activities.  Sally provided invaluable assistance and time in these, and my son George, together with John Pearce, ensured that all 135 controls were checked and SI units awoken on the morning of the event.

I feel that the site layout worked very well and Peter Brett’s teams worked admirably, despite the carryover from the proceeding day in moving equipment from the adverse conditions at Cookworthy.  The equipment itself was of a high standard and gave the necessary quality and flavour to the proceedings.  As a WRE event this gave an additional aspect which I believe benefits all competitors, not just the elite.  IOF published amended Guidelines for WRE events on 27th January 2010 but fortunately the changes were not too onerous and could be incorporated.  My thanks to the various organisation teams for responding to these.

And so finally back to Erik.  This weekend is an immense undertaking for a region and involves a great many people committing their time and energies over a long period.  Co-ordinating these tasks requires an individual who understands the broad spectrum and the minutiae of our sport.  We all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Erik for taking on this task again.

Day 3 Protest

Reason for protest:  No 10 (control 73) on non-existent path.  Totally unacceptable.  No 10 needs to be voided on our course.  (Note of explanation: Control 73 was in a depression which was near to an incorrectly mapped path.)

Decision of the organiser:  Course should stand.  Information had been provided in final details about possible new paths.  The specific change was highlighted in the start lanes.

Decision of the jury:  The jury agreed with the organiser’s decision.  Competitors were made aware of the issue.  Control was in correct position and there were nearby obvious features to confirm this.  It is accepted that this is an unfortunate situation but we do not feel that any adjustment is possible.

Images from Day 4 online HERE

Day 4 Organiser’s comments – by Peter Brett

I must congratulate Erik Peckett for proposing that we use the same site for the Relays as had been used for Day 3.  For while competitors would be familiar with the immediate area, and would have seen some of the ‘bagged’ controls during their previous day’s run, it significantly reduced the demands on the set up team meaning that we were able to leave the site by 7pm on the Sunday rather than when the light of the day was in its final throes.  What was surprising, given all the rain we had had in the previous weeks, was how well the ground stood up to the pressure of the footfall in the immediate assembly area with only the path between the car park and the club tents showing any real signs of damage.  And that will disappear in the coming weeks.

I must thank all of the people who helped run the two days of events on Braunton Burrows.  A quick head count suggests that it was something like 250 orienteers, their families and friends.  Without such a willing band of helpers it is hard to see how large events such as the JK can continue in its current format, and it is something I will be raising with British Orienteering.  Many of these helpers were up at the crack of dawn to finalise preparations for the day ahead only to be working onto midnight in the hope of speeding things along for the next day.  The net result for each of them was a combination of extreme tiredness, edginess and short fuses coupled with the question “why am I doing this?”  While it would be wrong of me to pick out one person for special mention I must thank Harold White from Northern Ireland for the help and support he provided me.  Harold is part of the team organising next year’s JK and shadowed me in the hope of improving the delivery of his region’s event.  In the end Harold became a valuable asset, taking on tasks that I had planned to do but was unable to due to the everyday ‘buggeration’ factors that came along to thwart my best endeavours.  Once again Harold, thank you very much indeed for your help!

In the end the event ran well with only a few hiccups and everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves both with the quality of the orienteering and the quality of the socialising.  It was unfortunate, however, that we managed to issue three people on lap 2 of course K with the wrong map.  It is unclear how this happened, given that the bags were labeled.  But it happened and for that we must apologise, especially given that these runners were expecting the equivalent of an Orange course but in the end ran something much tougher.

One disappointing thing to report was the disqualification of a team for cutting the corner from the final control to the changeover line and ignoring the marshal’s calls to return to the taped run in.  The use of the broken line symbol on the control description indicates a requirement to follow the taped route and that is mandatory not optional.

Peter Brett
Devon OC

Day 4 Planners’ Report – by Mike Forrest and Michelle Spillar

It seems that most of you enjoyed the Braunton Burrows experience as much as we did.  The area we had to work with is a planners dream, enabling us to aim at producing genuine head to head running combined with technical orienteering.  Hopefully you felt we succeeded.

The biggest challenge was to produce courses for the mini-relay (class M, M/W12-).  Although there are many paths marked on the map, some of them are not that clear on the ground.  I think we managed reasonable courses in the end, and the winning times of under 15 minutes were acceptable.  However, it was clear that some of the runners in this class lacked the basic skills needed to negotiate a yellow standard course.

Overall, times were slightly quicker than we had anticipated, but certainly near enough to the targets we were working to.  The leading elite men were running at just under 5 minutes per kilometre.

Thanks to everyone who sought us out on the day to thank us and compliment us on the quality of the courses – that is much appreciated.  There are however, two apologies to make.  Firstly, to the first lap runners in the JK Trophy and M 120- class, where we failed to anticipate the effect of these two classes running at the same time.  Consequently we should have put more control boxes at the first common control, which might have lessened the scrum which I understand ensued when the pack arrived there.  The other is to those of you on the Women’s Open and M165- classes who ran course 2-5 and were somewhat baffled to find that the control description for control 7 was “middlemost”, but it did not say what, and control 8 which was both described as a hill and a depression.  It was due to a last minute change, and shows that how ever many times you check things, there is still a risk of errors getting through.

Michelle Spillar (WIM) and Mike Forrest (BOK)

Day 4 Controller’s Report – by Roger Baker

Congratulations to Peter Brett and Devon OC for overcoming a series of problems in staging the event; to planners Mike Forrest and Michelle Spillar for setting appropriate courses in challenging terrain, and to mapper Brian Parker for being able to respond to their discovery of new vehicle tracks, sandblow and changing water tables.

Roger Baker