The OMM 2010, Dartmoor
Dave Bleazard has written up his experiences at the OMM on Dartmoor.
OMM 2010 Dartmoor
Claire Taylor and I travelled all the way down to Dartmoor for this year’s OMM. We had again entered the short score category ( 5 hours Saturday, overnight camp and 4 hours Sunday ) and this year got a late start on Saturday which meant a full breakfast at our B&B to set up us for the next 24 hours.
The event base was Okehampton military camp which meant we were already at 350m so the climbs were not too long, steep and savage , but not too long.
On Saturday we were one of the last teams to start and could already see pairs spreading out over the hillside and disappearing out of sight, the day was bright and clear and once we were off we could see the tors that the area is famous for.
The clear weather made navigation straight forward especially as a lot of the controls were on tors, look for a pile of rocks and head for that, although I did spend a couple of minutes navigating towards a group of cows until my younger partner with better eyesight pointed out my mistake. We had one great control in a re entrant that you didn’t see until you virtually fell into it and then it was big enough for the control, 2 marshals and their tent !
Overnight camp was on the moor at a firing range and the weather closed in once the tent was up and became windy and wet overnight.
The morning dawned wet and windy , more like OMM weather, and the tops of the hills were in mist. Our navigation skills stepped forward and we had a good day , making few mistakes and scoring better day 2 than day 1. The overnight rain had brought the burns ( sorry rivers ) up and we had one interesting crossing but friends crossed further downstream than us that day and needed teams to combine forces to get across safely.
The finish was right back in the camp and we were cheered in by earlier finishers and marshalls.
We finally finished 55th out of 197 starters with 360 points.
RouteGadget for Day 1 short score
RouteGadget for Day 2 short score
DaveBleazard
Posted on 17th Nov 10
by Admin -
News feed