Gilling Woods - 25 January    Tom Crowther

Have we become so accustomed to accurate, up-to-date maps that we can not cope when a map is 'dated'?    For many who attended the EBOR event at Gilling Woods the answer would appear to be yes.

To be fair to those who suffered it should be stressed that there was no warning of what was to come and the event flier even claimed the map had been up-dated in 2003. The extent of the review in 2003 was not explained but it clearly did not include the runability. That was several years out-of-date. In places what was mapped as white was very green and elsewhere the reverse applied.

Courses had been preprinted so you only pick up your map as you started. The Blue and Green courses shared the same first control, a fairly easy looking leg of 500 metres track/path run followed by 150 metres up hill through the terrain to a ditch. Although it looked straight forward it proved to be anything but that for many of the competitors. The map showed the  first 50 metres uphill as green and then changed to white. However the whole block of forest was definitely two shades of green and the ditch took some locating. The fastest time for the leg was just over 4 mins 30 secs but 10 mins was quite common and several runners took over 20 mins. The slowest time recorded was 27 mins.

Should the controller have allowed the control?  Probably not.

Was this the planner doing his best with an out-of-date map? Probably.

At what stage does a map become unfair? Who knows.

On the positive side the experience certainly made you navigate very carefully for the rest of your course and at least it was a nice day with blue skies and sunshine.

Mind you, the leg did generate a great deal of discussion in the car park afterwards and not all of it was complimentary.