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Following the British Middle Championships on Saturday 27 April, CLARO organised the Northern Championships which took place at Kilnsey South. Here, organiser Mike Cope and Planner Vicky Bailey give their insights into the area where the event was hosted and how the event went.
Ideas about CLARO hosting the Northern Championships alongside AIRE hosting the British Middles were discussed many years ago. CLARO’s own areas are limited for a big event so the club was more than happy to borrow an AIRE area.
All really started almost 2 years ago when dates were fixed, CLARO agreed to participate, Kilnsey South was chosen and an organiser and planners were found. Kilnsey is complicated though with permission needed from Natural England, a landowner, 4 farmers, Long Ashes Caravan Park and Threshfield Quarry Trust. Natural England was the biggest worry and not until their permission was granted could other permissions be firmed up. And it was found that Natural England cannot give an orienteering club permission for an event. They can give landowners and farmers permission to allow an orienteering club to hold an event. So which comes first? It all took a very long time. Outline permissions were obtained from all, course planning was started, but it was only in September 2023 that it was possible to confirm that the event could take place.
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!
Last weekend the British Middle Championships took place at Danefield, Otley. In this blog, organiser Chris Burden tells us more about the planning process for this year's event.
Written by Organiser Chris Burden with contribution from planner David Williams.
The choice of areas seems to go back a long way; certainly several years before Covid disrupted the events schedule.
The original area we thought of using for the Middles, was discovered while a few of us were on a mountain bike ride deeper in the Dales. Danefield was originally only the fallback if the Dales area didn’t prove viable. As it turned out, Danefield, an old favourite, proved far the better area. The Dales area was not, as a result pursued, but a new neighbouring area has proved excellent, and will be used for a Dales Weekend Classic Distance event in 2025.
Danefield is owned by Leeds City Council and access is managed through their Events in Park team who are always very supportive of orienteering.
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.
All aspiring elite athletes should read on!
As per our British team foot O selection policy, all athletes who wish to be considered for selection to the GBR teams for World Cup rounds 1 and 2 must submit an availability form by Friday 3rd May. The form can be found here.
World Cup rounds 1 and 2 take place in Switzerland (24-26 May) and Italy (1-2 June) respectively. These rounds will be the initial selection races for our WOC team, heading to Edinburgh in July.
The selection races used to pick our World Cup teams are Sprint Scotland; good luck to all athletes racing at these high-quality sprint races this coming weekend!
South London Orienteers Regional Event: 13th September 2020
OVERVIEW
After the club decided to cancel the City of London race for 2020 there was discussion about the possibility of a replacement forest event. After initial investigations, we settled on Glovers Wood
- Landowners (Woodland trust + several small private owners) were generally supportive of the idea
- Although it is a relatively small area the runnability is unaffected by summer vegetation and it could all be used by the planner
- There is a large flat car park field adjacent to the forest
EVENT PRINCIPLES
- BOF members only, to limit enquiries, Face-to-face discussions etc
- No Entry on the Day, to avoid paper forms passing around
- No results display at the event
- SIAC recommended but not mandatory. With the current situation, we have decided not to hire in or loan out club kit. Bearing this in mind we decided that the club stock of SIACs for hire (100) was insufficient to provide hire cards for everyone that would need them if made mandatory. In the event, just over 73% of competitors ran with SIACS (own or hire)
- Control Descriptions only available online due to the risk of cross-contamination
ENTRIES
SLOW uses SIEntries, which has been updated during lockdown to add some extra functionality
We started from the initial position of 2 starts, each with 10 competitors per 15-minute block (and a defined maximum number per course at each start) and an initial window of 3 hours. When this filled up, we extended to 4 hours. When this was close to filling up new BOF guidance meant that we could expand to 14 starts per block (again with restrictions per course). Note that due to limits on numbers on any one course in a block, in practice this meant about 13 starts per block.
Total Entries = 392
By looking at past events we allocated courses to the two starts with the aim of an even balance. We got to within 10%. SiEntries allowed us to define how many starters per block, plus how many starters on each course per block (e.g. 5 Brown, 3 Short Green & Light Green combined etc). When entering competitors were shown which course/block combinations were available for selection
Start 1: Brown, Short Blue, Light Green, Short Green
Start 2: Blue, Green, Orange, Yellow
A new feature of SiTiming which allows the automatic interface of SiEntries into SiTiming enabled us to keep late entries open online until 12:30 on the day of the event – this is configured by the club in both systems so can be changed at any time. We see this as a way forward for the future, eliminating significant paperwork and data entry on the day of an event and also the handling of either cash or credit/debit cards at the event. On the day one competitor entered on their phone online in the event field and ran a few minutes later!
SiTiming has a simple function for allocating hire dibbers. The operator picked any one of the hire dibbers from a grid box and then placed this in an SI master station and the competitor gave their name to the operator. Once this was selected from the database the transaction was complete. No need for the effort placing hire dibbers in envelopes etc. The operator handed over the SIAC to avoid the risk of other SIAC’s being touched (and used sanitizer frequently).
STARTS
There were 2 Starts, set approximately 70 metres apart in the main field. Start flags were also separate. Since there would never be more than one starter per minute there was only one start lane in each (3m grid), which ensured that competitors did not bypass the various SI boxes, which were all set on stakes and not handled by start officials
Box 1
- Sanitizer station
- SIAC Battery Test station
- COVID Guidance Notice
Box 2
- Clear station
- Check station (which also switches on a SIAC card)
- SIAC Test station (is it switched on?)
Box 3
- Course notices
After Start Line
- Start station
- Map boxes (widely separated). We decided to allow competitors to pick up maps from the boxes themselves on the basis that they had just used sanitizer on their hands and the alternatives had their own potential issues.
And Also…
- There were no control descriptions available at the Starts
- Taking an idea from recent Army orienteering events, several lines of yellow tape 2m apart were set out just before the call-up line to encourage queuing rather than bunching for the next start. This was extremely effective with competitors quickly picking up the idea.
- There were small cycles of queues, probably linked to the timing of each start block, but these shrank back down to near zero
FINISH
The finish was deliberately set in the forest, 200m from download, to ensure that people had stopped breathing heavily/sweating before they approached download. A Safety control was placed 10 metres after the Finish to check all competitors out of the forest.
DOWNLOAD & RESULTS
SLOW uses SiTiming at events. This enabled us to set up an unmanned Download station driven by competitors using the new ‘Self Service download’ option. We see this as a way forward for the future, reducing the number of Download helpers required. If a competitor had an issue with their splits, e.g. used a different SI card, a download would still occur but a message on their splits told them to visit the Troubleshooting desk.
We ran a second download station for those with hired SIACs which was also the SIAC hire and Troubleshooting desk. Returned SIACs were placed in a bucket by the competitor where they will be left for a week before returning to store One concern we had about this set up was that a competitor with a hired SIAC would (incorrectly) go to the Self Service Download and not hand in their hired card. This happened twice but we spotted them from the colour of the SIAC and as a result we lost no SIAC’s. SiTiming are looking at changing the message that appears on the computer at the Self-Service download for Hired SIAC’s to say “Please hand in your Hired SIAC” in red instead of the current “Hired” message. We are also looking at having another monitor on the Troubleshooting desk linked to the Self-Service Download to allow live remote monitoring.
To avoid bunching, the decision was taken not to provide results in the arena, either in paper form or on a monitor. There was no negative feedback from competitors on this. The intention was to use a feature of the SiTiming software to publish results online every 5 minutes. Unfortunately, we were unable to get this feature working before the event. We aim to implement this at our next event.
3m length cables were used for the download stations and printers to separate competitors from equipment and, in the case of the troubleshooting desks, the operator.
The entire Download operation was run by the equivalent of one person throughout the event
HYGIENE
Common contact areas were wiped down with sanitizer regularly. These included
- Toilets
- All SI stations in the Start system
- Download stations and printers
OTHER COMMENTS
Our biggest issue on the day was an unusually active hornets’ nest – resulting in 5 known stings, including 2 juniors. The nest was discovered late on in the planning and was judged to be very quiet at the time. We posted warning signs around the tree in question but on the (warm) day the hornets were very active and hence the stings. The nest was only on the optimum route for one course, but the Hornets proved to be more wide-ranging than expected. At least one competitor was disappointed that the club first aid kit did not contain antihistamine cream, but the provision of medication by unqualified personnel (attending a first aid course does not count) is a thorny issue. We shall review the options.
Based on the number of requests for help out on courses there is anecdotal evidence that juniors have forgotten skills. Planners may wish to consider this factor in planning
We estimate that the competitor/car ratio was about 1.8 – with more than half cars single competitor. This is a moderate variation from pre-COVID where we would have expected a ratio of about 1.9
Competitors behaved responsibly, observing social distancing, and following officials’ requests with good nature and lots of smiles! However, we did have a few coming to investigate the Start before their block – they were firmly sent away!
We had no issues with the general public on the day, indeed other users seemed cheerful and happy (must have been the sunny weather). However, we attached great importance to the Organiser bringing the Risk Assessment and all other up to date guidance etc, to the event. As well as the usual reasons for having the RA at the event it would help defuse any challenge on COVID grounds from a member of the public. Organisers should be aware that orienteering isn’t on the list of sports specifically mentioned in section 3.16 of the government guidance because it isn’t a team sport, and for no other reason.
As a general principle, we are spacing out events so that there is always more than a week between them. The same principle applies to hiring equipment to other clubs. This means that we can leave kit, including hire dibbers and SI units to sit for a long enough period to remove the need to disinfect it.
CONCLUSION
We had lots of happy punters. A lot of people went out of their way to say “Thank You”.
SLOWs next event is a Level B on Winterfold in late November. This is a bigger forest but will be taking place when the onset of dusk can be a challenge for ensuring all competitors are safe and control collecting etc. Therefore, we will want to reduce starts to a 3-hour window, preferably by starting 2 competitors per minute at each start or by running 3 or more starts.
We should add extra comments in Final Details (lifted from recent Army O event details)
- Only touch surfaces where necessary
- Only go to the Start when it is your time to do so
The challenges of COVID have accelerated our move to using new features of SiEntries and SiTiming to minimise face to face contact. At future events, we expect to:
- Have online entries open until 1 hour before the last start time for level B & C events
- Have online entries open up until 5 minutes before the last start time for level D events (e.g. SLOW mid-week night series)
- Have entrants select their start block when entering (we may then allocate the actual start time)
- Have result displayed online and refreshed every 5 minutes
- Control descriptions available online only
- Operate download as primarily self-service
And finally…This link is to a video from a runner's headcam on the Short Blue course at Glovers Wood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL6Dx1a5UEg. It shows how few people the competitor encountered on their course at an event with nearly 400 participants - and they are all social distancing. A (shortened) version may be of use when trying to sell orienteering to decision-makers at organisations such as Forestry England, National Trust etc.
Scholes Mill, Old Coach Road, Tansley, Matlock, DE4 5FY
Tel: 01629 583037, Email: info@britishorienteering.org.uk
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