I had the choice of Cold Keld Slack, which has parts you did not have the pleasure of running in - really heavy going stuff - and Cropton and Cawthorne, which had the checker-board block and the rides to the west, the open moor to the east, with part of Cold Keld Slack in the middle. A couple of months ago it was wonderfully open and mostly harmless - my, how it has grown.
Your post encounter comments were very mixed; but now, having seen the finishing times, I sense that most had a rewarding run and were satisfactorily challenged though not unfairly taxed. The variety of terrain on offer, I think, confirmed the right choice of area.
I would like to give a very warm thank-you to Brian for being bold enough to take on the task of controlling planning such as mine in an area such as this and also for seeing the event through in the face of sad family news early that morning. It was indeed a pleasurable and a rewarding experience to work with him. His concern for your comfort in the heat and soggy going made courses much more enjoyable than they otherwise would have been.
Thank you, Cathy, for helping us to set out the controls and collect
them in again. Thank you Helen and Andrew for assitance with the string course.
Thank you Keith for excellent organising, the crossing points and
everything.
Thank you Dave and Peter for operating the E-punching facility
- your efforts were much appreciated.
Lionel Carter.
North Yorks forests in June are always going to be hard work and recent heavy rains did not help. There were also some more runnable blocks which were not mapped well enough to use to their full potential but you seem to have enjoyed the event even if the more technical courses were short in the mainly runnable department.
I really enjoyed working with Lionel; he found many interesting legs, his pre-event planning gave me little to do and it gave me the chance to visit the quietness of the forest on some lovely warm days. The control 111 Rhododendron bush N side was also a great bonus in full flower. In answer to some queries, control 104 Middle ditch was in the right place (SW of the vegetation change: i.e inside the wood) and correct on all master maps.
Thanks to Keith and his hard working team and to Cathie for acting as my and Lionels assistant.
Brian Odell
Cold Keld Slack is one of my favourite areas and I was rather disappointed not to be running. From the comments of the downloaders though maybe I'd forgotten how tough it is! I must say there were no actual complaints which I took to be a good sign. I'm sure that a lot of that was down to the willing cheerfulness of the small but select band of helpers and I was very grateful to them. With Sport Ident you can trim your team considerably but unfortunately the computer management falls on the same shoulders very often and special thanks are due to Peter Watson (and Dave and Sue), without whom things would have been very different. We are gradually getting more people adept at data entry but the software is still a mystery to most and its difficult to give the Gurus an event off.
Thank you too to everyone who came with apologies to those who missed their printout at the end due to a glitz we couldn't sort out. I've tried to send the relevant printout to those who left envelopes in case they were among those who missed out.
I hope you all had time to admire the display of orchids along the road where we parked: we only squashed a few fortunately. Please come again!
Keith MacDermott