SROC REGIONAL EVENT 

Helsington Barrows
Sunday 8th May

Basic Results            Splits by course       Splits by Class      Badge times        String Course

ORGANISER'S COMMENTS

Many thanks to all of you who helped me to put the event on.  Thanks to good weather on the day and during preparation the task was relatively easy.  It was really nice to have good dry parking and assembly fields.  An entry of around 500 was as good as could be expected in view of the re-arranged Compass Sport Cup in Yorkshire.  Until 2 weeks before I was expected Wilfs to be present, then they declined to come!  The NWJS filled the gap to mutual advantage.  From the positive comments I heard during the day, the planning team's work was much appreciated.  Well done Brian, Jim and Andrew. 

Peter Knott

PLANNER'S COMMENTS

This was the first time that we have had a regional event on this area.  The Watkins' opened it up by putting on the Blodslitet here just over a year ago.  The hard work of everyone involved in this event and the enjoyment of the competitors is a fitting tribute to Tim who sadly died just before Easter.  

Helsington is a beautiful area and has some magnificent views from the top of Scout Scar.  It did set a few problems in planning the courses.  We wanted to use Barrowfield Wood in order to get the distance for the long courses, but is was severely damaged in the Winter gales.  As a result we were not able to exploit its technical nature and course 1 and 3 may have seemed a bit contrived.  It certainly provided a contrast with the gentle subtle terrain on the open fell.  

The other major constraints were the butterfly habitats which cover large parts of the area south of the finish and partly wooded area in the south east part of the map.  We kept control sites and potential elephant trails out of these areas and hope that the courses did not suffer too much.  

Sorry about the White course not being printed.  It was our fault for making assumptions and not checking the second batch of printing.  The only consolation is that the Yellow was similar and should not have been too big a step up.  Also we were over hasty in waking up and synchronising the controls at 7am so the split times have produced some quite remarkably false times for some legs.  Sorry to competitors for this.  

No 163 on the wall corner at the gate crossing point was missed by 10 competitors on courses 1 and 4.  The Controller has been very generous and reinstated these competitors because of the particular nature of the leg using this control.  He would have also been fully justified in disqualifying these competitors and this generosity should not be taken as a precedent.  

Many thanks to everyone who tool part and helped at the event and made it a success, with particular thanks to Peter who organised and to Andrew who controlled.  Planning an orienteering event is hard work but a lot of fun and so enjoyable when it involves spending time in beautiful areas like Helsington Barrows.   

Brian Jackson and Jim Lambert

CONTROLLER'S COMMENTS

Down on the Mersey we don't often get the chance to control an event in the Lakes, so this was a pleasant assignment for me, despite the short notice. Sunday's weather and the compact arrangement of Start, Finish and Assembly made this event especially friendly. Unfortunately no event is perfect, and we only discovered at 9:15 on Sunday morning that we had no White maps, because of a mental aberration by the printer. Proof copies had been seen and approved, but as there was no stock of 'blank' maps we could not recover the situation - though urgent photocopying in Kendal was briefly considered. I apologise to those who were asked to run Yellow instead.

Control-boxes 136 and 129 failed during the event and were replaced. A third (163) at the central wall-crossing was also reported faulty, but some of those who missed it admitted having simply forgotten to punch. However as it is almost certain that they visited it, we have been lenient and resisted disqualifying anyone on that score.

The planners had to guess how much to shorten courses 1 to 3 to allow for the drop down to Barrowfield and the return climb. Our guess looks about right, but in the ideal prevailing conditions most courses were about 10% too short for the winners. In wetter conditions they might have been too long! However, brilliant runs in M35L, M45L and W21L posed problems in calculating fair badge standards for the Short classes. I have exercised some licence here.

Thanks to so many for expressing their enjoyment at the Finish. My thanks also (on your behalf) to Peter for his smooth organisation, and Brian and Jim for planning good courses which found quite a few people out.

Andrew Tarr, DEE

Last Updated : 17.05.05