Lots of New Year resolution and an accessible venue brought 360 competitors to our first open event of the year. We haven't seen any results yet but judging by the comments overheard, Dave Shelley's courses presented a level of physical and technical challenge which quite a few competitors hadn't anticipated Calverley is just another of those interesting old oak, birch and beech woods along the Aire valley, full of bracken and brambles and old quarry workings--to be underestimated at your peril. The growth of holly in the last few years has 'greened' the map quite a lot (thankyou for the accurate update, Chris). This, together with the careful placing of controls generated a lot of head scratching and belated map reading. (Some might say 'ungenerous' placing but then some planners and controllers want to see competitors navigating accurately and not getting away with running and hoping).
Control 130 Knoll This pic. doesn't do justice to the steep, sharp-edged rocks, bracken, brambles or the difficulty many of us had with it, but the birch trees were beautiful
(Ali Wood has something to say about pro-active map reading on p.21. Perhaps he'll tell us about recovering from 'getting lost' in a future issue).
One unfortunate consequence of the rocky terrain was the number of injuries, two deep cuts from falling among rocks and one horrid graze from hitting the dirty road at speed. This last was John Pickering on his first O outing for seven years. We hope the knee heals quickly and he won't wait so long before trying again.
Steve Watkins (organiser) and the teams of helpers did a great job in running the event.
