Micr-O & more
in South Wales
Micr O at Llangynidr- lots of kites in a small area
Credit:
South Wales OC
A miniature mountain orienteering course was amongst one of the attractions for a trio of QO who made the trip to South Wales and Forest of Dean this weekend for a double-header. Ideal preparation for forthcoming summer tournaments, it was well attended by those seeking a technical challenge.
Mynydd Llangatwg
South Wales OC made excellent use of a small complex area with two "Micr-O" courses available to those there for their local event on Saturday afternoon. Each was about 600m long, with a scale of 1:1000 and 2m contours. Winning times were about three minutes. Jeff Pakes gave the format a whirl but Andy Rimes and Rosie Wych just concentrated on the main event.
Micro map- at 1:1000 scale
Credit: South Wales OC
On Blue, Andy was just five minutes behind Bristol OK's Clive Hallett and one behind Clive's clubmate Ifor Powell on technical moorland featuring pits and depressions of all shapes and sizes. Jeff was a further three minutes behind Andy. Soldiering on despite a stomach bug, Rosie took it steady.
The event's Start, Finish, car park, assembly and the Micro-O course all lay adjacent to one another! Throw in a food van selling wood fired pizzas and glorious half panorama view of the Brecons, bathed in sunshine and £5 for your runs and what more could you ask for?
Knockall's Enclosure
The name of the area may be familiar to some from Galoppens and other bigger events, but hosts North Gloucester OC only used a very small but technical part of the map this time. Unsurprisingly, a middle distance format was used, with controls only 200m apart, on average. Blake's Wood & Dingles Wood is usually only visited by those on the Brown or Blue courses. Parking was on a sun-bathed piece of hard standing normally used by lorries laden with rock from the working quarry adjacent. Brown comprised of two circuits of the area, barely half a square kilometre in size. Jeff (7th of 27) to his surprise finished above all nine competitors from North Glos OC. More importantly, this time he also got the better of Andy (8th), albeit by only one minute.
Next stop for Andy and Rosie is Slovenia, where they take part in the OO Cup competition running from Wednesday 24 - Sunday 28 July.