Caddihoe Day 2 PLANNERS’ COMMENTS

Planning the second day of the Caddihoe Chase on the Southern Tank Ranges at Bovington was always going to present us with some problems! The whole area is very physical and this is especially true of the open areas. Sadly there is very little nice runnable white woodland. The churned-up sand in the tank exercise areas can change from the consistency of concrete in dry weather to something akin to rice pudding after even the slightest rain! The vegetation in the rough open really is that - ROUGH – and often conceals gullies, pits, furrows and even tank traps. But, having completed your runs, you now know that, even if you didn’t before…

We were constrained by limited options for start and finish positions and needing to create suitable, appropriate courses for the younger juniors. Apologies for the uphill finish - we always grumble about “sadistic planners who give us uphill finishes”, but, again, we had little option. The next challenge for us was the number of roads and tracks and a relatively small total area. A good area in the SW of the map, across the public road, was too far to get to except for the 4 longest courses.

We hope that you “enjoyed” the particular navigational challenges that we set you and that you could overlook the effects of the tough terrain. Rest assured we did try to keep you out of the worst of the areas….. but if you went off the optimal route, you probably found some of them….!

To those of you, particularly on course 4, visiting control 549, who gave voice to some complaints about difficulty in accurately reading the vegetation classification in the area of the control, we accept some of your comments. However, we feel there were more than enough other features all along the route that should have guided your navigation accurately into the control, and rung warning bells when you headed, some way off course, into woodland! We have, however, learnt from it.

Winning times overall seem to have been about right, if a little short, but as it was the second day on rather tough terrain, we certainly didn’t hear any complaints about that! We were pleased to see so many of you competing over the 2 days and hope you will all enter again at next year’s Caddihoe.

A big thank you to Richard for his helpful, meticulous, but discreet controlling. Special mention should be made of the fact that not only did he “final control” all 84 controls on Saturday but also volunteered for an early start on Sunday morning to dib-check one of the sectors. Hope you had the chance to put your feet up and recover on Monday!!

Big thanks to Chris, Lynn & Simon Branford, Richard Brightman, Karen French, Mike Furlong, John Shucksmith, Cathy & Dave Warne for collecting controls at the end, just when it had started to rain. Final thanks to Maggie Dunn for an early start and soggy feet on Sunday morning, helping us check controls.

John & Di Tilsley (WIM)