ORGANISER'S COMMENTS

I wish I could claim to have organised such excellent weather but obviously that part was outside of my control!  It certainly contributed to making the day such a success and all the more enjoyable for competitors and those helping to run the event.

“Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted” a phrase I remember well from my former days.  And so it proved when Trevor Bridle, John Shucksmith and I met at the event area on Thursday evening to finalise how and where the buses would turn around.  Fly-tippers had been at work and had left a huge pile of rubble and waste right in the middle of the car park in exactly the spot where the buses were supposed to reverse in.  I don’t think that Trevor and John were expecting twenty minutes of hard labour!

 I believe that all went well on the day as operating at two fairly distant sites meant flitting between the two.  I hope that Di Tilsley has forgiven me for forgetting to hand over the control descriptions to Registration as we sorted out parking?

 Sincere thanks are due to: 

• The officials; Kay Sayer (WSX) – Controller, Di & John Tilsley – Planners.
• All the Wim members who worked so hard preparing for the event and in various roles on the day. 
• John & Liz Cook of WSX for providing First Aid cover.
• Sandford School for the use of their excellent facilities and to the PTA for providing refreshments.
• John Warren for being a first-class mentor during this, my first experience at organising an ‘O’ event of this scale.

I had plenty of time to enjoy the remaining sunshine and to ponder on how the day had gone once everyone had departed from the school car park.  I had locked my car keys in the boot as I put the final few items away and had to wait for my wife to arrive with the spare key!

Mike Furlong

PLANNERS’ COMMENTS 

Gore Heath is a small area and the extensive network of paths makes planning an event quite a challenge! This year’s excessive growth of bracken only added to the problem. However, on the plus side there are good contour features with some lovely bits of forest and we planned the courses with the intention of giving route choices, as well as trying to keep green, blue and brown runners off the paths as much as possible.

Listening to your comments at the finish (and we thank you for giving constructive criticisms, even before you got your breath back!) it would appear we generally satisfied your requirements. Many did remark on the physical nature of the terrain and courses, and times generally were a little on the long side (particularly lower down the results list) but there were no complaints (that we heard!) about not getting your money’s worth…

Kay has already mentioned control 642 on the Green course being in the wrong place in the re-entrant, for which we must sincerely apologise. Sorry to all those who felt their run was affected by it. No excuses, we should have noticed, and we will learn from it. There were some comments about control 565 from Blue and Brown runners. In hindsight this control (a large depression) was not an ideal choice, but when finding this control in the initial planning stages, we both, independently, navigated straight to it! Perhaps we don’t read the map as closely as others do! Apologies to those who felt strongly about its unsuitability. Once again, be assured we will learn from the decisions we made.

Thanks to Kay for her constructive controlling. Thanks to the wonderful WIM organising machine. Particular thanks to Maggie Dunn & Lynn Branford for their special efforts before the courses opened, and to the 10 WIMs who stayed on to collect and sort controls afterwards. We had cleared the forest by 3.30!

Memories abound of our time in the forest of deer, hares, woodpeckers and peregrines and the most amazing examples of fungi seen for a long time.

 Di & John Tilsley

 CONTROLLER'S COMMENTS

What a lovely area Gore Heath is, especially when the sun is shining! The only downside for me was the spiders spinning their webs at head height! However, I became adept at dodging these! Di and John Tilsley provided challenging courses of a high standard. Well done to them. My job was made very easy by their meticulous attention to detail.

There were no undue problems on the day, but there was one small hiccup with control 642, re-entrant. This was slightly off centre of the circle, for which I apologise. I hope this did not affect anyone's enjoyment of the course.

As always, the WIM organisation ran like clockwork and the computer systems had no problems.

Well done to all of WIM members for a well organised event. I just claim extra points for the sunshine!!

 Kay Sayer   (Wessex O.C.)