The Common Wood routegadget (event #165) can be accessed directly by the link above.
The Penn Wood routegadget (event #166) can be found here
Common Wood
Level C
4th January 2026
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 robin
Planner's Comments
I do hope people found the somewhat long walk to the woods was rewarded by a pleasant run on a beautiful day in the Chilterns. As Alun says, we don’t use this relatively flat, blessed with low undergrowth runnable woodland enough, so it was a privilege to set some courses here. It’s an area however that is never dull – with a meandering path network, confusing junctions and enough green to prevent you taking a straight line.
I must start by thanking all of the TVOC teams for putting this event together, under Alun’s direction. A whole additional area in Penn Wood saved juniors and families a long walk, but added to the workload of these volunteers, and especially Bob and Pattie Beresford our mappers – a big thanks for accommodating this.
A freshly laid gravel path is a welcome sight to most orienteers, but not to a planner and controller when it appears near one of your controls just before the event. We appreciate that whilst we showed it prominently on the (blank) map correction at the start, it’s very difficult to memorise and apply that later on in your course. We had considered informing of the code and control sequence on your course – but referring to the rules they’re very explicit in this respect, forbidding ‘course information other than those corrections’ to be shared. I hope it didn’t detract too much from your enjoyment.
And finally, my huge appreciation to Mark Foxwell our controller, for being ever supportive, accommodating and very easy for a planner to work with.
Nat Skidmore (TVOC)
Planner
Controller's Comments
I would like to say well done to Nat and Alun for their excellent planning and organisation. Running the event across 2 areas of woodland with remote starts and finishes provided a lot of challenges (and several kilometres of taping) which was handled well . Nat’s courses made good use of both areas with some very technically challenging courses in Common wood and good introductory courses in Penn. Also, many thanks to all at TVOC who made the event work today and Bob for his map.
As Nat mentioned we missed the new gravel path near control 114 before printing and included it on the start lane maps as a correction. But I appreciate that it isn’t easy to remember exactly where the map correction was 30 minutes into your course, and apologies to those who were confused by this. Listing the control number and courses affected with the correction may have helped. These were left off as we interpreted these as being ‘course information’ per BO rule 25.4 but would consider adding this if it happened again in future.
Control 104 failed during the event and was replaced by a backup as soon as we were aware. We have marked this control as not mandatory for those affected. A general reminder that if this happens you must use the pin punch as backup or risk disqualification.
Mark Foxwell BKO
Organiser's Comments
It was -8C when I arrived at Assembly just before 8am this morning. And given the warnings of the weather conditions and ice, it was not surprising that quite a number of entrants decided to give the event today a miss. But for those of you who braved the conditions, I hope you felt rewarded by the sunshine and the condition of the forest.
We have used Common Wood in the past, but only in conjunction with Penn Wood, and only for longer courses. Unfortunately there is no sensible parking area near to it, with all the fields sloping and tending to be wet.
However we decided that for this event we would use the parking at Penn Street and walk competitors the 1500m down to Common Wood. This would give more competitors the opportunity to experience Common Wood fully. But it was not realistic to expect the shortest courses to walk that distance, so the three shortest courses stayed in Penn Wood.
This made the event very complicated to organise. Two (adjacent) parking areas, three road crossings to marshal, two Starts, two Finishes, all soak up manpower. TVOC may be a large club, but it was still quite a struggle to find enough willing helpers to cope. And that was without them realising what temperatures they would be standing around in for an hour or three. So on your behalf, can I gave a big thank you to all those volunteers who made this event happen.
Actually my role was pretty straightforward. It was merely a case of asking our team leaders to mobilise their teams, and then rounding up some extra volunteers to plug the inevitable gaps in the teams that we had. Thanks team leaders.
The parking at Penn Street is also great. Whilst the fields are actually remarkably dry again now, that is normally a pretty rare commodity at this time of year. So thank you to Sam Buckles for permitting our use of the estate.
And finally thank you to those of you who turned up on a cold winter’s day. Your support makes all the work involved in organising an event worthwhile.
I would welcome any comments you had about the event, and specifically whether the access walk was too long for the event.
Alun
entries@tvoc.org.uk