Ash Priors Common

Well thanks for coming out today- we hope you enjoyed the physical and mental challenge after the Christmas excesses. After the lousy weather leading up to and over the Christmas period, it was a pleasure to see everyone enjoying the sunshine despite the muddy conditions.

We hope you enjoyed the format- it was a new one for us and lent itself well to a seasonal novelty. The results seem to demonstrate that not everyone fully understood the rather complex scoring system- we had hoped the files emailed would suffice- on reflection a more comprehensive briefing would have been preferable.

Additionally our apologies for the poor colour printing on the finished maps causing errors in identifying some colours (reds, pink and brown) under the tree cover we hope it didn’t spoil the event for those affected.

The ‘roving black ball’ caused some misunderstandings- it was not a ‘bonus’ ball as such, but could be used as a black ball –if needed- rather than going to an actual colour if you chanced upon it at the right time. Again clearer instructions would have possibly helped.

Thanks to Roger and Judy for helping at registration and to the control collectors- we were able to retire to the refreshments within 30 minutes of the last person finishing- a record.

- Andy

It was with some relief that the Snooker O event seemed to be a suitable challenge and was enjoyed by the variety of competitors - I would have liked an intermediate variation to test the speedy teenagers but Andy ran out of time to incorporate one into the already complicated enough scoring calculations. I cannot claim the idea to be original as it was inspired by a similar event I discovered on the Mole Valley website [the Surrey orienteering club, not the countryside goods store of the same name!] and the organiser was kind enough to send me details.

The weather was kind which compensated for the rather soggy ground in some areas. Andy has hopefully fine-tuned “the spreadsheet” to produce acceptable results - it has been rather more of a challenge than he anticipated!

The maths challenge by my calculation was only correctly worked out by Gavin Clegg and Robin Carter: 12 days of Christmas 3 wise men 26 is the date of Boxing Day 8 reindeer pulled Santa’s sleigh 5 is the square root of “Christmas Day “ 4 calling birds or letters in Noel Produce a total of...............58 Thank you to the soup makers who produced a stunning selection, Roger and Judy for registration duties, Chris Philip and David Harrison for squeezing lots of cars into a small space, control collectors and all those who helped in the kitchen.

- Rosie