Some comments from the Planner:

Firstly, thanks for all the feedback. It is always welcome to hear the competitors’ perception so that we can continue to improve the event. Thank you all for being so constructive.

Secondly, most of the shortcomings which you have rightly pointed out were caused by my suffering some heart problems early in the summer when most of the detailed planning work needed to be done - I hadn’t been able to do much before because of bird nesting. My problems meant that I could not spend much time in the hills myself and had to call upon the help of the rest of the team who were already very busy themselves. I managed three short visits, with a chaperone each time, to do a bit of surveying for the O map but was mostly confined to deskwork. As a consequence, we didn’t manage to feedback as many map changes to Harveys as we would have liked and as we had achieved last year. They did a great job with the last minute bits we did give them.

It had been my intention to have blank O maps and Legends on display at the campsite for those unfamiliar with this format. It got missed, sorry. Also, Harveys suggested supplying a separate legend for their map which I also missed.

A few control sites seemed to cause problems which I thought were straightforward - I could see the features perfectly well but some of you appear not to have. Perhaps we should have more simple control sites and concentrate on the route choices?

My philosophy has been, and will continue to be, to have few controls and give you good choices of route. The downside of this is that it is difficult to guide you round the heavy going and can lead to a bit of a lottery. Sometimes you find a sheep path or some mown heather and sometimes you don’t. Overall I think it evens out and the courses are better for fewer controls. To continue giving good route choice (which gives everyone something to talk about afterwards!) I don’t think we should introduce a 'score' event. We have a good range of courses already, I think.

This was a first experiment with giving the Phoenix courses a change to a detailed O map. To be safe in the hills you should be able to navigate with anything and adjust quickly to its strengths and weaknesses. In my view that’s a true test of navigational skill. However, for this first attempt the orienteering part was intentionally relatively easy. I want to do it again next year and try to make it more spectator friendly as well for those waiting at the finish.

Any other comments would be gratefully received. Now I have my 'device' fitted and should be safe out on my own again I am starting to look at the planning for next year.

I’d like to thank all the rest of the team who pitched in and managed to cover most of the work I couldn’t do. Without them you wouldn’t have had an event to come to !

Adrian Barnes