Inveraray, 30th April 09
Results and RouteGadget.
It is easy to volunteer for things and then the reality hits when I realise that I actually have to produce some orienteering courses! With the ‘fast men’ in the club there would have to be a blue course as well as green, orange and yellow.
So, some armchair planning and then a ground check followed. The ground check revealed some map corrections so I had to work out how to do these. We also tried to incorporate a lovely waterfall but it would have been very contrived. The best bit of the ground check was finding out just how good the tea room in the Inveraray Castle basement was!
The courses were planned and then the email came from the estate saying we could not use the rough fields at the northern edge of the map. Back to the planning for the green and blue courses, some thinking about them when walking to and from work, can I get the length in without taking the courses all the way up to the Tower (boring navigation, lots of climb and horrible slopes!). Then I had the idea – give them a ‘map exchange’ so that they could do two loops round the better parts of the forest. A bit of exploration with OCAD (and some help from Paul and the OCAD tutorial) and it is so easy! Green part one was controls 1 to 8, turn over the map and complete the course by doing controls 9 to the finish. Similarly, Blue was controls 1 to 9, turn over and controls 10 to the finish miraculously appear! Competitors seemed happy with this arrangement and it did allow for a small area to be used. For evening events, it also cuts down the time used in setting out the controls.
Many thanks to all who came along as it is quite a drive for everyone. Twenty four people competed, with the furthest competitor coming from Troon - welcome Matt! Paul put all the controls out for me (cost me his coffee & cake in the tearoom – easily bribed!); Ross & John A helped to collect controls at the end. We were all in the chip shop queue by 8:30pm!
Posted on 30th Apr 09
by Lynne Walker - Secretary
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