Planner's Comments

I hope everyone enjoyed their runs. As you know, we had scheduled the event in February but storm Eunice prevented us from going ahead. Holding the event in late April proved to be better in every respect, with the bluebells out, and the bracken and nettles still low. What a beautiful day!

This was my first time out as a mapper and planner for about 30 years, and hopefully my keenness to find interesting control sites didn't result in too much over-mapping. I was happy with the contours, but mapping the vegetation was a real challenge, and of course the paths in a well-used wood like Hodgemoor keep on changing.

There were no big problems on the day thankfully. We managed to keep the local horse riders and walkers on side, and one entrepreneurial home owner even opened up a pop-up cafe on the route back to the car park.

Thanks to David Frampton for his expert controlling, especially helping me figure out the right level of difficulty for the shorter courses. And thanks also to Mark, Peter, Nat and Mike for helping with the control putting out.

Finally, it was great to be able to use Perkin Elmer's car park. There are rumours that it may be turned into a housing development, let's hope not…

Julian Birkinshaw