Sunday 13th
February 2011
After lovely weather on the Saturday, it was typical to wake on an
orienteering Sunday to rain, and this must have put some people off, as the
turnout for a Parkhurst event was a little less than we would have expected.
Having not planned an event for years we were keen to get everything
right, and on the day, apart from the weather everyone seemed happy with their
courses, and most importantly of all for us the controls were in the correct
places.
The thought of planning an event from scratch had certainly been
daunting. After our first visit to
the forest we had sorted out the yellow course and had plenty of ideas for
control sites on the other courses.
We then spent a few days planning on paper before a return visit to the
forest to check the various routes and finalize the control placements. Pete
Bartlett kindly checked over our courses prior to printing the maps.
The most difficult to plan
was the Green Course, it was not an easy task finding suitably testing control
sites, so we opted for a longer distance and fewer controls, well done to Chris
Pritchett who completed the 6km in 46.55.
Ian Ralph finished first on the Light Green, finding the 10 controls in
44.02, whilst the Merritt family was victorious on the Orange setting a time of
50.57.
It was great to see the 17 strong group from 2nd Gurnard
Scouts with their leaders who came along for the Yellow Course and certainly
helped swell the numbers. It was
one of their groups led by Tom King who finished first in 28.26. It looked like they had enjoyed
themselves, they were very muddy! And hopefully we may see them and their
families at future events.
We need to mention the increased entry fees at this event, recently the
Forestry Commission has raised the amount it charges us to use their forests. Previously we paid an amount of £25,
which covered us for 5 events, however, we are now faced with paying £50 per
event, a tenfold increase. As you
can imagine this will have a massive effect on our clubıs finances, as an
example well over 50% of the money taken at registration on Sunday will be paid
to the Forestry Commission for the use of the land just for this one
event. It is vital that we try to
encourage as many people as possible to take part each month, if anyone has any
ideas to help us increase numbers, or know of any other groups such as the
scouts who would be interested please let us know.
Thank you to Iris and Christine for organizing the string,
unfortunately, having put some of their course out on Saturday, they had to
re-do it on Sunday as some of the string was stolen over night!!
Also thanks to Pete for printing the maps, Iris, Christine and Margaret
for registration, Ian and Chris for collecting the string and to Sue, Glynn and
Dan for the squash and for helping to collect in the controls.
In the end we found the whole experience of planning this event very
enjoyable, if anyone else feels they would like to have a go please donıt be
afraid to tell us, there is always someone who will be available to help you.