Sprint Scotland Race 2

Men

1. Kristian Jones

2. Freddie Carcas

3. Jonathan Crickmore

Women

1. Fiona Bunn

2. Mairi Eades

3.Cecilie Andersen 

Sprint Scotland Race 3

Men

1. Nathan Lawson

2. Jonathan Crickmore

3. Freddie Carcas

Women

1. Charlotte Ward

2. Laura Robertson 

3. Fiona Bunn

Well done to everyone who competed at the event and to all our athletes who topped the scoring boards!

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.

Some observations:

• We had 315 pre-entries, perhaps a little over the average for the British Nights, and 273 runners, so a somewhat higher than average drop-out rate, probably due to the weather; very few Covid related refunds.
• We printed just over 200 food vouchers, not all taken up of course, but suggesting that pre-ordering food, which I thought many would not be keen to do, was in fact quite popular.
• Not so much a numerical statistic, more just an eye-opener, but an eye-watering one.  Spatially, 300m and 6 contours separated the area outside the golf club from the start; Meteorologically, one was normal UK autumn, the other arctic temperature, and windchill. The change was halfway up, very sudden, and quite startling.  
• Winning times were largely within spec, so the weather clearly didn't interfere with the orienteering; in fact, many commented on how wonderful it was to run at night in the snow, and what was also commented on as an outstanding map.
• The start seemed to work well with its 'virtual' tents but decent lighting. We couldn't get the tents up, so just used the frames to support the lighting.
• Having a warm and snug golf club for post-run analysis, drinks, and prizegiving was a huge benefit, and great credit must go to the club, which changed hands during the gestation period for this event, the bar manager and his wife only starting work on 1 November.  The new owners nevertheless honoured in full every arrangement we had made with the previous owners.

Some lessons:

• The very early starts were a little chaotic, for which we apologise to those runners affected; the lack of shelter meant that we decided not to put maps and control descriptions out until the last minute, but whilst the map boxes had all been taped down, the CDs, although glued and hung on secure pegs, just started blowing away one by one.  Put in bags, the whole bag blew away.  So we resorted to handing them out, and some course 1 runners regrettably had to go without until we retrieved the bag from the bushes down gale.
• We had one control fail early in the event, but most people used the backup punch.  Some didn't, but in the interests of the event as a whole, we decided to remove that control from the affected courses.  Backup punches may be '1980s' technology, as one comment was made, but they always work – can't be said for even the latest technology.
• Despite a request in the final details, and a fair amount of detailed information on the start procedure, most runners neither displayed their bibs over their waterproof nor knew which lane they were supposed to be in.  So it took extra work to make sure people got into the right lane for their maps.  Many people seem very blasé about final details, even brash in claiming that they never read them. They are there to make life easier for runners and helpers alike, and if everyone did what they were asked, complex processes like a timed start in the Arctic would run much more smoothly.
• We were very lucky with parking.   We knew we would struggle, but had a plan B.  The problem was that snow largely invalidated plan B, and we had no plan C.  We should have had, and it's hugely to the credit of the parking team that we didn't in the end need a plan C.
• Parking for campers and camper vans was part of plan B and barely worked.  We apologise to those who paid for camping pitches but weren't able to use them, though I think we did accommodate everyone in the end.

The last comment from the Organiser; the volunteer team was outstanding.  We had two ladies, both on the start, neither of them club members, one an occasional orienteer and maprunner, the other newly moved into our patch from Northern Ireland, yet to join us, who along with all the other start team people stood cheerfully steering runners through the process, then stripped down the start and carried it all back down the hill to the van. Never a complaint, always a smile, always a willing hand to do whatever was asked of them.  North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club (NGOC) may not be a high-profile club in the orienteering rankings, but we have as good a bunch of volunteers as you could find anywhere, and in the end, all credit for the success of BNOC 2021 belongs to them.

Finally, feedback from runners has been all positive.

Photo credits:  North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club

British Orienteering would like to thank Pat Macleod, British Nights Orienteering Championships Organiser, and all members of North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club for your hard work and determination in making this night event finally happen.  Some very challenging conditions and as one competitor comments "definitely an awesome event to remember". 

Congratulations to all British Orienteering Night Champions crowned in their individual age categories.

Preliminary results are available here. 

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Save the date!
Plans for the British Orienteering Night Championships 2022 are already well underway.  The event is to be held on Ilkley Moor and is being hosted by Airienteers (AIRE) on 19 February 2022, it is followed the next day by a National Event and UK Orienteering League (UKOL) on Burley and Ilkley Moor. Entries are due to open very soon.

To find out more details are available here.

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Important to please note:  Renew your membership in plenty of time to ensure that you take advantage of the early closing date fees for the Major Events taking place in the early part of 2022.