Haw Park Night Event - 3rd February 2007

Planners Comments

With night orienteering having a relatively small number of enthusiasts I had the ‘opportunity’ to plan the EPOC fixture for the second year running but unlike last year when it wasn’t feasible to link into the following day’s District Event, this time it was possible to pool resources which made everything so much easier.  

Many thanks to Emma who’d already done all the hard work selecting and tagging control sites as well as setting everything up on OCAD so apart from a crash course in how to use OCAD and some helpful advice and suggestions from the controller Peter Watson who kindly agreed to a ‘ BOGOF’ all I had to do was plan courses which didn’t overlap with the District Event ones.

Haw Park is quite a compact little wood with a good path network which could catch out the unwary in the dark although I tried to select legs that gave the opportunity to cut across the wood. The brambles where worst on the south west corner of the woods but it was worth using one of the sites there just to get people over the canal and bring in a bit of variety.  There are badger sets in one of the most intricate areas so the courses had to avoid this part of the wood as we couldn’t afford to have anyone accidently blundering through that section in the dark and having any close encounters.

Not wanting to jeopardise the SI punching being used on the District event I played it safe by doing it the old fashioned way with control cards and punches, so thanks to James Wetherill for collating the results so quickly after the event as well as his help in
co-ordinating things on the night so that everything went smoothly. Having access to the assembly area just inside the woods was vital as it meant we could get everyone parked up in close proximity and keep an close eye on proceedings      

It was good to see so many of the nocturnal regulars supporting the event and the spread of finishing times would indicate that we’d got the balance between distance and difficulty about right on the night.

Thanks to everyone who helped on the night to make the event successful.

Alistair Tinto