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Twenty-four hours till our event in Wales. I’m having severe computer problems, meaning among other things that I’ve had trouble getting the revised event details up, but you can read the first version here. New information is:
1. There’s no White course, but there is a string course.
2. The Green course is longer than shown.
3. Despite the recent rain, the car park field is useable.
4. The start and the finish are up on the hill, about 500m from assembly.
5. There won’t be a remote drinks station, but if it’s sunny there will be water at the finish.
See you there!
Just one day of the Elsh* sixday, on the way down to hols in Tenby. Maybe Russ is more of a masochist than I gave him credit for, if he offered to control this event. It’s a tough area! Tussocks, overgrown rock fields, bracken and low heather, so that it took me almost 70 minutes to cover less than 5 km. (16th place out of 21.) Ten minutes of that was lost on control 4, which turned out to be a lot further than it appeared on the map… (A pity after having got to control 3 in 5th place.) I think it was a tricky control, half a mile diagonally uphill through bracken, so credit to those who found it rather more efficiently than I did. I correctly ignored a control down to the right, and also correctly noticed that I needed to pass the hilltop to my left, but as I got closer I went wrong somehow and I’d have been happy to go out again later and find out how. I came to a depression with a boulder in it, which may have been the one clearly marked on the map, but the rock stream I came to next was going downhill, so can’t have been the one just above the control. It didn’t help that the bracken was covering a larger area than that shown by the undergrowth screen on the map. Finally I saw two guys running east and realised that although they weren’t on my course they were probably running away from my control. I ran up and to the left and hey presto…
Click to enlarge (550 kb)
I had the same start time as Martin Dean, whose Croeso blog is here.
Something a bit peculiar about Andy Hemsted’s results. Andy took 45 minutes for one control, achieving the fastest time for most of the others, and the same thing happened when he ran a couple of days later at Wentwood. Is it possible that he went to the pub during the races?
*That’s what Catherine calls it. 
Today there were local events near Stafford and Hinckley but I decided to go most of the way to Aberystwyth to run on a hill called Banc Trawsnant. This was one of Mid-Wales Orienteers’ monthly league events, and I wanted to go over and say hi to some of the members. Back at the JK I was discussing the fact that Welsh areas are seriously underused, since when I’ve been in contact with Brian Hughes and Bill Marlow in order to work out how more events could be put on over the border. My conclusions are that:
1. Due to the low population in the Cambrian mountains, members of clubs such as HOC and WRE would need to help.
2. Due to the distances involved, the events need to be relatively important in order to get enough entries.
3. Due to environmental considerations and high fuel costs, (a) people should be persuaded to share transport, and (b) it’s better if more than one event is held at once, to increase convenience.
Croeso meets all these criteria, and any extension in the use of Welsh areas probably also needs to meet them all. Something like the JOK Chasing Sprint/Harvester Relays weekend fits the bill…
Back to today. It was a beautiful day and there was a good turnout. I ran the Medium course: 3.4 km, 170m of climb. I got around in 42:45, but three minutes of that were wasted when I convinced myself that I’d overshot the second control.
A slight panic on the way back: I got to Builth Wells and discovered the petrol station had run dry. The tourist information centre was closed, but a helpful? list of useful phone numbers in the window suggested the nearest alternative petrol station was in Crickhowell! Mobile phone to the rescue: Google found me the number of the petrol station in Kington, and when I rang it was a relief — for me at least — to be told that they didn’t have any diesel but they did have unleaded. Phew.
p.s. Well done to John Embrey who came home third on the longest course (21k) at today’s Long O on Cannock Chase.
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