Kilnsey is complicated for other reasons.  We learned at JK 2016 that relying on a field for parking in March/April is not a good idea.  Emergency arrangements were needed just before that event when it was clear that a nicely sloping parking field with top access and a lower exit used for maybe a thousand cars for the Kilnsey Show in the summer would just be too wet in March/April.  Threshfield Quarry is massive and can swallow up lots of cars on hard ground.  But it means a long walk to a start and from a finish.  It was thought that this would put a lot of people off, though in the end it didn’t.  Cars for the event easily fitted into the quarry with hardly any hold ups even though much of the parking near the quarry entrance was initially taken up by Fellsman Hilke competitors returning from their event.

Kilnsey South rises to 450m.  With a north wind and rain it can be a serious concern.  Competitors were warned when the event was first advertised that a waterproof hooded top might be compulsory.  A few days before the event all competitors were informed that such tops would be compulsory.  It was very cold on the day when the start team went off to set up and early starting helpers went off at 10 o’clock.  Later starters were a bit luckier.

The area is used for farming sheep and cattle.  This gives two problems.  There are lots of walls and fences to keep the animals where they should be, and where would the animals be on the day of the event?  To a non-farmer, the latter seems simple, but farmers often don’t know where their animals will have to be, as it depends on the weather, the progress of lambing and so many other jobs that have to be done.

Yorkshire Dales walls and fences are big and they need big stiles to cross them where there are no gates.  Competitors on the longer courses were treated to a variety of ladder stiles, milk crate steps, a crawl through and a specially built step stile near the end capable of taking 700 plus competitors at a rate of 4 or 5 a minute.

The highlights of the day came as the first competitors returned smiling and giving very positive comments about their courses and the arrangements.  At the same time the weather started to improve.  And then when it improved further the ice cream van started doing business and it was warm enough for competitors to be standing around looking at results and discussing their courses.

CLARO is a small club and this was the biggest event the club had ever taken on.  Some much appreciated help came from elsewhere, but members rose to the challenge and did an excellent job on the day.  For the rest of the year the club will revert to hosting evening and family events with regionals in June and September.  This will be a relative rest before helping with the JK in 2025.

Northern Championships 2024 results. 

Kilnsey planner Vicky Bailey's perspective

Planning on Kilnsey was a challenge for all the practical reasons Mike has mentioned, but also because as planners we had two hard acts to follow in the shape of 2016’s epic acts-of-God JK and AIRE’s sunny summer special in 2018. It seemed appropriate then that our event served up something in between; on the day, a moderately grim start melting into a modestly mild finish; in the lead up, a catalogue of every other available weather, never friendly enough for shorts but nothing so hostile that it saw us off the hill. No sun, no hail strikes, but come the day: a sunburst of primroses.

With the assembly area already fixed we were limited with how much we could vary from AIRE’s event, which had used the same quarry for car parking. Early efforts to find a novel start location were quickly abandoned – you didn’t want a longer walk to the start, did you? But for the finish we gambled on a short walk back to assembly for the fun of a combined finish with the White and Yellow courses in the caravan park. This also left us with a little more length in the courses, which meant a better share of Kilnsey proper for the shortest senior courses before the inevitable march off the hill. For the longer courses, Mike and Chris’s efforts with permissions and crossing points opened up access to additional areas not used since the JK – a big help for keeping things fresh. Planning tactics evolved over the thrashing-out process. Our early strategy of avoiding long legs crossing the walls resulted in somewhat bland Middle-style courses that lacked “story”. In the end, using the walls to set up macro route choices provided better structure, and made for some entertaining post-race analysis on Routegadget. Every crossing point was worth it, Mike, honest!

The most memorable part of planning at Kilnsey has been the efforts undertaken by so many volunteers to overcome its challenges. Fathomless feats of endurance and ingenuity! An alphabetised schedule of animal-dependent crossing point logistics. A 60kg sheep-proof control marking solution! Dauntless control collectors taking on longer loops than their original courses and a map layout for every permutation of scale and paper size. The amount of time and care that goes into these events is in equal parts scary and inspiring. My tip for anyone considering taking on something similar is to get yourself a co-planner. Find one who always finds time to be slightly less busy when you are super busy; who has a seemingly exhaustible supply of patience, and a very good recipe for flapjack – then no amount of trans-Pennine weather tantrums and late-night PDF checking can get you down for long!

David Williams, the planner, identified a possible field for the arena, which we had never used previously; the field just to the south of the one we eventually used.   This allowed him to use the best of the area. He structured the courses Jan–March 2023 at the same time coordinating with Tony Thornley producing the completely revised map off new LIDAR data. By this time a year ago to allow review in competition condition the courses were more or less fully planned and controlled. Having had input during April 2023 from David Bowman assistant planner and Mark Garside (WCH) controller. Subsequently courses and map were given constant minor amendments and updates to take account of the storms, wet conditions and middle distance RWT rule changes.

The parking field has become a regular for us over the past 15 years, when we hold Regional events at Danefield.  We knew it was well drained.  It has coped admirably with the cars for all previous events.  We’ve checked it regularly throughout this very wet winter, and never had any doubts about it coping, despite having to accommodate three times the number of vehicles we have previously.  It meant quite a long walk to the arena, but we knew it was 100% reliable.

Last year by March the original assembly field was in prime condition.  This year we did a final check three weeks before the event, just before the map proofs were ready to be printed.  There was a strong chance the field would never drain sufficiently to take vehicles and 900+ pairs of feet.  This was when our brilliant hosts, Sue and Howard Cliff really came into their own.  They suggested we use the paddock and agreed to build us the bridge across the ditch leading to it.  It proved the best of arenas.  The grass didn’t cut up, and it was more compact than the original field which doubtless helped create the splendid atmosphere of the event.

The change of assembly field resulted in a few slight last-minute adjustments to the map, but did not affect the planning of the courses apart from the run-in.

We were able to pull the event off just using Aire members, which made recruitment and organising a good deal simpler than is often the case for a Major event.  From what I saw and heard on the day, all the teams did a pretty seamless job. 

At Danefield we were delighted to hear so many compliments about the courses and the organisation.  The rain held off, although a little more sunshine and a warm wind from the south would have been appreciated. I guess you can’t have everything.

We were pleased to see that both Rob and Lindsey King’s String Course and Maze were well used.

Results from the British Middle Championships 2024. 

Aire’s next large-scale events are the Sprint and Urban events in Leeds on 6–7 July 2024.

And the Dales Weekend in the Malham area on 14–15 September 2024.

Anne once said that she’d been put off from Orienteering for years by the energetic descriptions of it by a friend.  She was finally introduced to the sport in autumn 1975, as a result of an ‘explorers’ talk by Hally Hardie, West Anglian OC, and an event a couple of weeks later.  That led in due course to Anne and her family competing in the White Rose Weekend in 1976 and then Highland '77.

She started taking on officials’ roles quite quickly; she helped organise the 1981 Midlands Championships, helped form a schools’ league run jointly by WAOC and Happy Herts, filled most of the posts in the East Anglian Orienteering Association, and was Coordinator of JK 1986 held in East Anglia. Following this event, she was named as the person “making the most outstanding individual organisational contribution to sport in the Eastern Region” at the annual Service to Sport awards of the Eastern Region Sports Council.

Anne was elected Vice-Chair of the British Orienteering Federation in 1987, but her time in this role was only 2 years after the new Chair, Roger Lott was posted abroad in his job and former Chair Clive Allen held the fort for a period.  Anne was Chair of British Orienteering Federation from 1989 until 1992, a period of considerable activity with the introduction of a radical new levy scheme, issues with land access connected with environmental concerns, and reviews of National Office staffing and the membership structure.  A highlight, organised by Anne together with David Peregrine, was the 15^th International Orienteering Federation Congress held in New Hall, Cambridge in July 1990, with 26 nations represented.  Anne and her management team were also able to negotiate continued long-term sponsorship for British Orienteering from TSB Life, which included a smart 40-page ‘Orienteers’ Handbook’ in 1991 distributed to all members.

Anne was introduced to Orienteering for handicapped people in 1989 at the World Orienteering Championships in Sweden.  At that time, the then Minister for Sport Colin Moynihan was suggesting that all Governing Bodies should provide for disabled people in their sport.  Sponsored research into the development of Orienteering in the UK for handicapped people supported Anne in going to study and take part in ‘handicapped orienteering’ at the 1990 Swedish O-Ringen.  After her report back, the British Orienteering Federation got a grant to get started, and in April 1991 Anne used her ‘View from the Chair’ text in CompassSport to set the scene for the new discipline known as TrailO.  A steering committee was formed with representatives from the disabled community as well as British Orienteering Federation clubs.

Anne put tremendous efforts into starting TrailO in the UK, and together with Tom Renfrew she was successful in getting a grant of £25,000 from the Foundation for Sport and Arts for a 2-year research and development programme, including the creation of permanent courses.  The equipment purchased with the grant is still used at major UK events.  In 1993 she wrote ‘Trail Orienteering - a comprehensive practical manual’, 64 pages A4 with many illustrations and coloured maps, published by Harveys.  She was the first Chair of the British Orienteering Federation TrailO Group when it was formed in 1993, and continued in this role until 2006; she remained a member until stepping down in 2017.  She was voluntary Team Manager of the Great Britain TrailO team for over 20 years.

In 2017 British Orienteering presented a special certificate to Anne, recognising her long-standing commitment and dedication to orienteering.

At the beginning of the 90’s Anne was getting more involved in the international TrailO scene too. She took the Chair of an IOF TrailO Steering Group in 1993, and continued as Chair when it became a Committee and then morphed into a Commission, finally retiring from this post in 2010.  For her work in developing TrailO internationally, she was awarded the prestigious IOF Silver Pin in 1998.  The inaugural World Cup in TrailO was held in Scotland in conjunction with the 1999 World Orienteering Championships.

Both in Britain and internationally, Anne was always strongly supported by her husband Don, who provided his own significant input as an IT specialist.  He once famously commented, at a TrailO World Championships (WTOC) banquet, that "the majority of people in this room are here because of your input."  One of Anne’s happiest moments was handing the gold medal to Dave Gittus when he won it at WTOC 2006.

Anne had a very sharp mind when it came to planning the way forward for the new IOF discipline of TrailO to make it into one with clear and unambiguous rules, fair to all participants, and requiring skill levels at least the equal of other Orienteering disciplines.  She envisaged a top-quality sport that would attract both handicapped and non-handicapped orienteers from nations throughout the world, and to achieve her vision, she was involved in considerable negotiation with others with alternative views on how things should be done, especially in Sweden.  But she battled on, and eventually got her way on most issues.  Many countries began TrailO as a result of her efforts, and this led to the first World TrailO Championships taking place in Sweden in 2004.  She did as much if not more work outside the committee room and one of her greatest achievements was to organise a very successful WTOC in Scotland in 2012, an event that included the first (unofficial) WTOC TempO competition.

Anne had a quite outstanding missionary zeal, which meant that very many capable people all over the world were carried away by her enthusiasm and contributed valuably to the cause.  One such was Brian Parker, who contributed by writing a comprehensive manual on course planning at an elite level for use internationally.  Anne has also always been a great communicator, in this case doing her utmost to make the world aware of what was going on.  For example, a 3-page spread ‘TrailO blazes new trails’ in a 1993 edition of the IOF magazine Orienteering World gave a really clear explanation of this new discipline, together with a map example and notes of developments in Portugal, Belgium, Sweden, and Great Britain.  Updates on technical progress and TrailO’s spread around the world appeared regularly in the Orienteering press from then on.  International TrailO clinics, initially at the Swedish O-Ringen, started in 1994.  She worked very hard to get TrailO better known in the handicapped communities both in the UK and abroad, but at the same time, she was rigorous in applying rules that ensured that a clear definition of ‘handicapped’ was applied to participation in the Para class in TrailO events.

Anne’s legacy is a thriving sports discipline, now further developed worldwide with speed and relay formats and very popular ‘virtual’ competitions online.  She contributed significantly to British Orienteering Federation’s development leading up to its Silver Jubilee in 1992 but will be remembered best for her quite remarkable achievements in bringing TrailO up from almost nothing to the sophisticated sport it is today. RIP

The tribute for Anne was written by Clive Allen in consultation with Dick Keighley and Brian Parker.