Lydeard Hill and Muchcare Wood

Event overview

For the penultimate QOFL in the 2016/17 season, Spencer Modica planned the courses with Jeff Pakes organising the event.

Graham Hartley won the Green course, and as he is winning the Green league after four events- this should mean that he keeps his lead up. On the Short Green, Ray Toomer came first with an impressive margin of 17:24, with an overall total of 42:28. Upon closer analysis of the splits, it shows that he was winning for the duration of his course, having the fastest time on all of his legs apart from two of them, where he came second to Peter Grierson (Total time: 63:12) of Devon for those two legs. Well done to Ray!

For the Juniors, as there was no JOG on the Saturday, many of them chose to run in the QOFL; the competitive entries on the White course was made up entirely of QO members, many of whom regularly attend the JOG events. Nine-year old Martha Macpherson won the white course. That shouldn't be a surprise as she's been getting plenty of practice at JOG on the Hare course.

Overall the event was highly popular with around 50 club members attending, so the credit goes to the volunteers of team 2 who helped make this event happen.

Tom Hasler

QOFL page, including league tables after QOFL4

Planner's comments

Speech writers always say “Never start with an apology”. Luckily this is not a speech so I can apologise. Firstly to all those wondering why the courses seemed so much steeper than the advertised elevations suggested. I apologise because my misunderstanding of the guidance for how this elevation should be worked out. led me to undervalue the elevations.

For completeness I have gone now done the job according to the guidance and the elevations are: Blue (255m), Green (185m), Short Green (110m), Light Green (150m), Orange (135m). I should also apologise because I find it difficult to come to terms with the guidance to put controls next to depressions rather than in them. The nature of the courses would have been very different had I done so and I will reflect on this before I fully relinquish my dark side.

Apologies over, I tried to use the area to provide a variety of terrain, leg lengths and route choice for all the higher technical difficulty courses while providing confidence building courses for white and yellow and challenge for those stepping up to Orange and Light green. I hope I achieved this and, after looking through the results, I think that the winning times were broadly where I hoped they would be for such a physically demanding area. The recent cold snap helped checked the brambles a little, so overall I hope that you will be able to think positively of your own course experience.

Spencer Modica

Competitor's view- Green course

John Trayler M70 has been incredibly consistent on the Green course for many years now and up until recent years, regularly finished in the top 3 each season. With plenty of strong runners in attendence, he finished in the top half on Green on Sunday- how does he keep doing it?

Jeff Pakes

I must say that it was pleasant to have it warmer than the Wessex Galoppen last week, although the wind in the car parking field was a little chilling. For Lydeard Hill of course I was expecting climb so to see only 130m climb was somewhat of a relief. Climbing is not one of my strong points.

On the Green the first control looked reasonably straight forward with a vegetation boundary just before a sharp bend in the path as an attack point, if the small path on the right was not easily seen. As it was, the small path was visible and so was the vegetation boundary to the north east. Check compass and go. Unfortunately the white area seemed scrubby and I could not see the earth bank. I returned towards the path and tried again. Found the earth bank and realised I had not found it before as it was not visible until I reached it! Wasted about four minutes.

From 2 to 3, attempted to more or less follow a straight line but aborted as the undergrowth looked like it might get thicker. Routes through 4,5 and 6 fairly straight forward as the undergrowth was fairly easily crossable. Leg 6 to 7 gave a route choice contour or a 'down and up'. Chose the down and up, as the only obvious feature on the contour line was the deep re-entrant and traversing the slope can be hard going. Had to zig-zag up the open area and have a rest. Felt it was further than expected from 7 to 8, with the pits seemingly in a gully.

No real problems on the rest of the course but was careful with the network of paths going back up Lydeard Hill. Going to 13, intially hit a small earth bank rather than the one leading to 13 but going in the right direction. Nice downhill finish. Having finished the course felt the 130 metres of climb must have been an understatement. It certainly felt like it! An interesting, physically demanding course.

John Trayler

John sounds like he felt every last metre of that 55m of "lost" height gain! See Spencer's mea culpa above.

Organiser's comments

In what felt like the first weekend of spring, droves of you flocked to a venue we haven't used for a QOFL in five years. Of course, in the intervening time, we've used the area for junior and night events. We even used Middle Hill and Aisholt Common, which the Green and Blue courses ran out onto, at QOFL1 this season. Not that everyone realised!

I was glad at the high attendance of 100+, particularly for the work Spencer had put in as planner and Bill as Spencer's assistant. I thought the bigger event happening in the New Forest would attract more but we had well over 40 of our own at Lydeard Hill, bolstered by a good contingent from JOG. Devon OC turned out in force too bringing a lot of very useful orienteers with them.

Sorry to a few of you who couldn't run your first choice of course- at one stage we thought we were going to run out of maps on the junior courses. Thanks to Jim Pearson for volunteering to help recycle maps at the Finish post. We recycled some maps- if you would like us to email you a replacement, please contact me (see contacts page).

A big thank you to the farmer Mr Warmington for the use of his field, which offered good parking and lovely views across Taunton Deane.

Thank you to all the helpers (all named below), especially those who did more than they were asked to do and those from other teams who volunteered their efforts, including some on the day itself. You made the event run very smoothly. Finally, thanks to Roger and Judy, for their prompts and suggestions in the days leading up to the event.

Jeff Pakes

Credits

Team 2 ran the event, plus some who volunteered to help on the day- thank you!

Here is who did what:

The following people let me know they were unavailable- thank you. From Team 2- Richard Sansbury, Roger Dickey. From the SI team- The Pages, Steve Robertson

I didn't hear from the following members of Team 2: Adele Appleby, Nevell family, Martin Longhurst, Gunning family, Will Kromhaut & Elliott Smith, Norman Harvey, P Williams & family.