Page updated - July 6, 2010 East Pennine Orienteering Club

Holmfirth

Regional Urban Orienteering Event

Planners Report

I had never set foot in Holmfirth before mid May this year so with zero local knowledge of the area and no detailed orienteering map in the early stages of planning; it was always going to have to be a case of playing it relatively safe.  Whilst I did try my best to find a couple of tricky control points in the town itself, I also had to be mindful of the locals and that the traffic on the main road is a lot faster than at other urban events in the region such as Ripon or York. In addition to this, the restrictions placed on us by the likes of the Gala meant that the routes in and out of the start/finish area largely dictated the shapes of the courses.

We wanted to utilise the waste ground above the woods as it offered something a little different and having watched awhile competitors criss-crossing it, although not always in the right direction, I think this worked well and hopefully made up a little for the long legs in and out of the town as these legs were always going to be a problem as there isn’t much route choice. Although there are a number of straight line routes north/south there are virtually no cross links on these in a westerly/easterly direction so unless you started bringing in excessive amounts of climb, once you started down one of these tracks there was no way off to take you off them. As a consequence the technical difficulty of the courses wasn’t going to be that high but the event was always going to be as much about coping with the physical challenge of the terrain as the route choice.

Coming to an event in Holmfirth I felt it was very important to get everyone (except the juniors) into the town itself and although its not really that big, perhaps I should have kept a few more of my original control sites in the area, but given the congestion experienced by some runners around the Town Hall steps and the inevitable crowds beginning to build for the gala, there is limit to the number of times you could can cross the town without ending up with dog legs and coming across later controls. I did avoid the temptation to put a control on Nora Batty’s steps as this would definitely been a step too far. Its many years since I even watched an episode of Last of the Summer Wine so I won’t have known what the tourist spots were anyway.

I’d like to thank Richard Payne for all his much valued support and guidance as my controller in the rather hectic lead up to the event and on the day itself and Paul Taylor, the organiser, who sorted out all the permissions and whose vision it was that enabled us to hold an event on what is a brand new area for us. The map was still being drawn right up to the week before the event and I would also like to thank Dave Peel for regularly sending me updated drafts during May and June as the map gradually took shape which enabled me to get on with the planning.

Like someone said on the forum, we’ve proved orienteering can be done around Holmfirth and we will build on the experiences here for our future events. Whilst having the event at the same time as the Gala did restrict the use of the playing fields and access to the town we did generate a bit for interest in the sport going by the number of people who did ask me what I was a doing, especially when practicing suspending the control under the bridge. 
Thank you for giving it a go and we hope that you’ll come back next time we hold an event here.  We may be able to be little more creative next time with the courses but I doubt we ever improve on the weather we enjoyed on the day.

Alistair Tinto