Newcastle and Tyneside Orienteers

North East Score Championships 11/10/15 Beanley

Results Index

Results File

Championship Rules

Planner's Comments

I hope competitors will agree with me that Beanley is a challenging area with a lot to offer for orienteering, including a good range of terrain. My approach to planning the 60 minute score was to allow the strongest competitors the option of doing a full circuit of the moor, which a good number of people achieved. I kept the number of controls in the forest low as the time would allow everyone on that course access to the moor.

For the 45 minute score I placed more controls in the forest which presented a choice between time spent collecting those or committing time to get out onto the faster areas of moor. Generally I tried to make the controls relatively easy to find, on the basis that route choice, speed of decisions and timing should be the main skill factors in a score event.

Looking through the results I am very impressed with what runners achieved across all classes and I hope people will add routes to RouteGadget to see more of the route choices made. The bracken did cause a bit of a nuisance in some places and has spread significantly since the mapping of the area was fully updated a few years ago. I relocated a few controls to avoid some of the worst bits after a visit to site in early September when it was particularly rampant. We did some minor updates for this event but to fully map all the vegetation is quite a big task, so apologies to anyone who got caught up in any unmapped areas, as I did a few times when planning, putting out controls and even again yesterday when collecting them!

Thank you to everyone who turned up for the event and to all the club officials and members who helped on the day. Particular thanks to John Crosby for his support in controlling the event and his sterling effort putting controls out on Saturday. We are also fortunate at Beanley to have supportive landowners who have been very easy to deal with. Steve Pullan at Natural England, who oversees the area in its status as an SSSI, also provided a lot of helpful advice from his knowledge of the area.

George Hare

Safety Note

One competitor has discovered a tick bite. We advise making the usual checks

RouteGadget - Please visit and upload your route and see where others went and where other courses might have taken you.

Guidance to upload a route to RouteGadget

Advantages of using RouteGadget are:

• You and others can see each other's routes taken.
• The planner can see what responses there were to the navigation challenges that were set.
• You can have youngsters talk through their routes to other members of the family