Chiltern Challenge 2025

Level B

6th April 2025

RouteGadget Please do add your route; the planner is always keen to see where competitors went, and competitors find it useful to see where others went.

Please refer any queries with these results to Alun

The following long leg was on the Black and Brown courses (See planners comments below)

Red 3364m 85m climb – saves height
Green 3187m 95m climb – shortest
Blue 3252m 110m climb – makes more use of valley path
Purple 3848m 95m climb – longer way round valley but extensive use of paths

Organiser's Comments

I'd love to take credit for laying on such fantastic weather! And, with the TVOC event team structure, the role of Organiser is made massively easier by delegating all key tasks to our Team Leaders and their teams of helpers. It is they that deserve all the credit for what seemed to be an excellent event today.

Never-the-less, one should always look for lessons to learn.

The toilet queue was far longer than I had expected. I apologise profusely for that. Did everyone arrive early, en masse, and create an initial queue that took ages to shorten? I obvously should have ordered at least one extra toilet, and/or a gents urinal. Lesson learnt.

We have also learnt that orienteers will take any short cut possible! Including on the route to the start! We had planned for people to follow the taped route up to the start, rather than cut the corner. The real problem that this created for the start team was the people tried to join the start mid-process, instead of passing through the entire starting sequence as required. In all seriousness, this is a critical safety issue. All starters simply must dib the Clear, Check and Start stations. Without doing so, we can not be certain that you have started, and won't hang around to ensure you are back after!

I wasn't sure how to handle the following situation. At the end of the event, after everyone else had gone home, two cars remained parked in the field. They didn't seem to belong to anyone at the event! (Another group asked me whether they could go for a walk before leaving, so I am not talking about their vehicles). So I assume the two cars were non-orienteers who had simply made use of our free car park! It was suggested I lock them in overnight! If, by any chance, they were orienteer cars (which I really don't think they were), it would really have helped to have asked me first. It might have been too easy to assume the cars belonged to people still out on their courses and to have started searching for them...

We have already had some very generous feedback about all aspects of the event from a wide variety of you who enjoyed the event today. It was a real pleasure seeing you all there. Thank you for coming and enjoying what is my favourite TVOC area.

John Dalton

Found- 1 map case and compass (combined). Let me know if it was yours!

Planner's Comments

I hope you all enjoyed your runs at Hambleden.

We were certainly lucky with the weather and the forest was looking lovely with primroses, vast herds of deer and extensive views down the Hambleden valley to the River Thames.

Hambleden is a lovely, large runnable area (if you can cope with the hills). I therefore planned the courses as Long-distance style courses rather than more Middle-distance control-pick courses. I hope this let you practice fast efficient navigation through the terrain throughout each leg rather than just detailed navigation into controls. I also tried to give some route choice options on longer legs.

As an example, on the Black and Brown course, I managed to fit in an ultra-long route choice leg of over 3k covering most of the length of the map.

See the above map exerpt where I have shown distances and climb for some of the main rough routes on a leg on both the Black and Brown courses. However, accurate execution of the routes, staying on line, using easier running and conserving height where possible was just as important as the general choice of route. I would be interested to see the routes you took on all the courses and encourage you to upload your routes onto Routegadget.

Some early starters were lucky to see some of the wild wallabies that inhabit the Hambleden estate. Apparently they are believed to be descended from escapees from an animal sanctuary at the nearby Fawley Hill estate owned by the late William McAlpine. Whilst taping one of the control sites, I was lucky enough to see 5 of the wallabies standing up on their hind legs, watching me before they bounced off.

Finally, and most importantly, thanks to all of the TVOC helpers, especially John Dalton for his calm and efficient organisation, Mark Thompson who as mapper had to keep track of the ongoing felling and Pete Jones (SN) for his wise and helpful words as Controller.

Nigel Bunn

Controller's Comments

Thanks to TVOC for making my controlling easy.

Nigels courses needed very little input from me. Having a very long leg on a couple of courses will be interesting to see on routegadget.

The climb seemed high, but winning times were close to recommend.

Great map by Mark Thompson.

It's a great area for wildlife. During my first visit I had to give way to 100 deer. Today I had to give way to loads of pheasants. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the wallabies!

Pete Jones (SN)