Caddihoe Chase 2005

Organiser's Comments (Wilf Taylor)

Planners and Contollers make an event succeed. Organisers attempt to facilitate their hard work, and make sure there are enough good people to make those plans happen on the day. Cris Tween is magnificent and calmly effective controlling the computing side. The Caddihoe has an extra work load on the start team on the second day and John Ceely's team worked very well yet again in that vital area. Hopefully the rest of us were an insignificant blur in the background. I would like to mention the string course, planned and run by the Boucher famille. It was much more physical than the average string course, and we ran out of string both days, but it was very much appreciated by the entrants. Le'a and Eulalie ran it perfectly, while both parents were struggling out on the fellside. I think we can look forward to a Long String O at the Tamar Triple, if we can find 10k of string.

Planner's Comments (Nigel Bateman)

Thanks to you all for taking part. As most orienteers know, there's a lot of work involved in putting on a regional event and although the chasing day used much of the same area the need to interlace courses while trying to avoid repetition probably required just as much time in the long run. For me, the justification for all this is simply the number of people who turn up and run. So thanks again for making the effort.

The Day 1 courses were at the long end of the guidelines - if they were over it was probably because I decided that I would personally rather orienteer an extra 500m than have to walk it to the start (which would have otherwise been further west) - although this extra distance only added a few minutes to the M21s I appreciate it probably meant 10 minutes plus to some of the older competitors. Overall, winning times were broadly what I'd expected. The exception being W55S & W60S where the combination of the extra length and a physically difficult control (No 6) made times a bit long - my apologies if this was a problem for you. Luckily we had a team from the Met Office dedicated to ensuring good weather on site for the weekend and I hope this helped!

There are loads of people who ought to be thanked but I've only space for two: Roger Green, who helped me with OCAD and Picover and managed the conversion of a set of map files into sealed bagged units sitting in a box in the start lane; and Graham Pring, who is in danger of becoming the Caddihoe Controller! Special thanks to him for his attention to detail and helping to make sure everything was both accurate and fair.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was that the positions of the Day 2 starts meant that a lot of adults were able to watch the juniors complete their course before setting off on their own. Maybe there's an opportunity for us to play with the Day 2 format next time to increase the general enjoyment of the weekend?

Controller's Comments (Graham Pring KERNO)

Having enjoyed competing in the Caddihoe Chase many times, I was pleased to be asked to Control this year's event. My initial nervousness as to working with a Planner with whom I had not worked before, was soon dispelled when Nigel produced draft courses of good quality nearly a year in advance. At this time it was clear that the map would need some revision, which was duly carried out. The area is a real challenge to plan on and I want to compliment Nigel both on the quality of his courses and on the way he managed to interlace all the courses over the two days.

Looking at the times, it is clear that many are longer than the guidelines on Day One. I think we underestimated the more physical nature of the western part of the area compared with Day Two. I'm pleased to say that I only received one comment on a control site, which I duly investigated. It concerned Control 539 ( middle crag foot) on Day One, (courses 1 and 2) and I agree that the feature was about 15m further west than the map showed, but at the same height on the hillside. I hope this did not cause too much loss of time.

In addition to thanking Nigel for all his hard work on your behalf, I must also thank Wilf Taylor for organising and all the helpers for making sure both days ran smoothly. Also to Cris Tween for all her work behind the scenes with the entries and computing.

Finally, you may have noticed that Nigel and I spent many hours clearing bracken. This is a problem on several of Devon's best areas. A radical suggestion to the Devon committee is to consider moving the event to the Spring. It would certainly be a break with tradition, but the competitors may, and certainly the Planner and Controller certainly would, appreciate it.