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.

Day 1: Monday 14 August

08.45: Wake up and breakfast at the hotel. Very good, although the lack of bananas was sad! Coffee to wake me up after a late arrival last night and a Team meeting to outline the purpose of the trip and the day’s arrangements.

10:00: Travel to Kecskemet for sprint training. The area we used was in the same town as the JWOC Sprint will be but as it was in the suburbs we are not sure how similar it will be to the competition terrain. We were getting used to the layout of typical Hungarian suburbs and housing estates.

12.30: Finished Sprint training. Post-training analysis showed that some of the simple looking route choices were quite significant and there were not many 50-50 choices which could be a typical feature of the course planning.

13:00: Lunch-time. Sandwiches and discussion of the morning’s training.

14:00: The afternoon was Middle distance training with SI at Bosca directly adjacent to competition terrain. It was a completely unique area with varied vegetation, 2m contour interval and a very tricky “labyrinth” of juniper bushes in an open area which was crazy! We checked out the mapping, and what everything would look like and the runnability of different vegetation to help us with choosing route choices later in the week or at JWOC.

17:00: Returned to the hotel. All of the athletes went to the adjacent outdoor swimming pool for some post-training recovery and relaxation. It even had a cold plunge pool: perfect for an ice bath!

18:30: Dinner at the hotel, followed by analysis of the days training. We are all in groups of 3, and each group has to discuss and do a mini presentation about one session. My group had to do the Middle distance training.

20:00: Team meeting. One group did a presentation about each of the sessions including terrain descriptions, what challenges the terrain poses and strategies to use and we discussed this along with looking at GPS and GoPro footage.

Day 2: Tuesday 15 August

08:00: Breakfast and leave for training.

10:00: Long training at Iszak. Trained in groups of 3 so we could test different route choices on Long legs. A Very varied area with almost every type of vegetation possible.

12:30: Lunch break, trying to stay out of the sun.

14:00: Middle style training at Kaskantyu. This area was more open than the previous Middle training, also with some very tricky labyrinth style bushy areas. Most of us took this as a steadier training after the Long in the morning. Sharing a massive 12kg watermelon after the session was the perfect way to refresh after a hot run.

17:00: Return to the hotel.

18:30: Dinner, including a speciality Hungarian dessert made from chestnuts.

20:00: Team meeting, similar format to last night with lots of interesting and useful points raised about route choices and strategies.

Day 3: Wednesday 16 August

08:00: Breakfast as usual.

09:00: Leave for morning training at Zsana. This was a Relay training session and we were joined by some Austrians, French, Australians and Spanish for a 2^nd Leg Relay simulation where athletes were set off at random short intervals to help us experience head-to-head racing in the most relevant Relay terrain. This helped us to analyse micro-route choices and assess the impact of the heat on our performance in the highest intensity session so far. We know that speed and fitness will be extremely important for the Relay in particular due to the rapid terrain which can be a good focus for our training next season.

13:00: Lunch.

14:00: Sprint training at Szeged. This was a different style of Sprint to the previous session and had more challenging route choices and complex sections which may be more relevant to the old part of town in the Sprint embargo for JWOC 2018. Across the 2 sessions, we covered both types of terrain for the Sprint competition area and could compare the techniques needed in each of them and how we might need to adjust during the race.

17:00: Relaxation time at the thermal pools, including spending some time perfecting our diving technique.

Day 3: Thursday 17 August

09:00: Breakfast.

09:00-13:00: Rest morning. Some athletes received A-level results. All good news luckily! We then explored the local town, with a return trip to the pool.

14:00: Long training at Pirto. The only session of the day but it was a quality session, with an 8km course for the girls and 11km course for the boys. This terrain was adjacent to the Long competition terrain so should be the most relevant. Technical challenges included route choice between blocks of vegetation and running against the lines of the plantation.

17:00: Celebration of results day…at the pool again. Focusing on hydration and recovery for the last day of training in the heat.

Day 5: Friday 18 August

08:00: Breakfast.

09:00: Leave for Bocsa again. A chance to either re-run one of the most challenging courses of the week putting the techniques we had learnt into practice, try a different course or plan your own route to check out what you wanted to. I did the boys course to test some different Legs. The aim of this flexible session was so that everyone could get out of it what they wanted to. Most of us came back with more confidence than last time.

12:30: Lunch.

14:00: Long training at Pirto again. Another flexible session to allow people to do what they felt they needed to do and tidy up anything they had identified earlier in the week. For me, I just wanted to test out running straight route choices and so did a part of the boy's course from yesterday that I hadn’t already done.

17:00: The Final trip to the pool and time for a competitive beach football game. The outdoor pool and plunge pool was refreshing after the hottest day of the week so far with temperatures hitting 35 degrees.

18:30: Dinner.

20:00: Final meeting wrapping up what we had learnt during the week, and applying the learning generated from the training areas to the actual competition areas. The team will be producing summary booklets to bring all of our notes together and for this to act as the JWOC 2018 Bible, especially for the benefit of those who may get into the JWOC team who haven’t had the chance to come on this camp.

Day 6: Saturday 19 August

03:00: Very early departure was not enjoyed by some, especially when the alarm was set at UK time…naming no names.

08:30: Arrival back to the UK, surprisingly not too disappointed to arrive into grey, rainy weather after the sun overdose in Hungary!

Thank you, Fiona! This is really insightful.  We wish you and all of British Orienteering Talent Squad athletes all the very best with their on-going orienteering training.

Read Aidan's training camp diary here.

Additional news on Talent Training and Coaching Camps are in the links below:

Pre-JWOC Training Camp: Diaries of training continued...

Summer Talent Camp held for Talent Squad (15-18 year olds) Badaguish, near Aviemore in the Cairngorms National Park, Scotland