Planners Comments

Rawnsley is the most physically demanding orienteering area on Cannock Chase, being mainly a series of steep ridges, with sides of spurs and reentrants.

The area was last orienteered about four years ago and the existing map was heavy in dark green, these no-go areas often with very little other detail. .The resultant surveying showed much more runnable area and also unearthed a host of new features, mainly mountain-bike paths and four-wheel drive tracks.

The storms earlier this year blew over many large trees near to the Assembly area and rendered unusable the white and yellow courses planned at that time. Therefore, with advice from my Controller, I  had to move the intended Start, down to the valley bottom and re-plan both those courses and the initial legs of the other courses. Forestry felling in the west section of the map also resulted in course adjustments in the final weeks.

My overriding priority was to keep the senior course runners in terrain as much as possible, even though paths were always near by, and to offer route choice.

On the day, waiting at the Finish , the impression was that the vast majority enjoyed their courses. The range of times was a reflection of the course; tough but fair, I think.

Improvements ? The map does not show (yet) a host of small features that are constantly being found or created. My apologies to those competitors affected.

First thanks to the Waters’ family : Hazel, Andy and Kevin, for map survey work. Thanks to Doug Peel, Cath Williams and Mark Stodgell for help in mapping and use of OCAD. Thanks also to Dennis, Chris, Bob, Claire and my daughter Sophie for bringing in the controls.  Biggest thanks are to Controller Garry Langston for supporting me and guiding me through my first attempt at planning.

David Thomas WCH

Organisers Comments.

Thanks must go to Dave, the farmer, for the use of his field which provided us with a superb setting for the event on a day that we could only have dreamed of a couple of weeks back!

Not everything went quite as planned, I arrived early morning to find a very frisky horse had managed to escape from its overnight pen so spent the first 45 minutes doing a very poor John Wayne impersonation as we tried to bring it under control so that the gates into the car park and forest could be opened.

The superb turnout on the day, 400 competitors in all, meant that we had underestimated the numbers of maps required on the Blue and Brown courses. Normally this would not have been a problem, but unfortunately we also lost our ability to print maps on the day causing me an extra headache. I suspect the good weather and some last minute pre JK training accounted for the very good attendance.

A big thank you to everyone who willingly allowed us to recycle the maps as you finished your courses. We will make sure maps and competitors are reunited as soon as possible. Thankfully I am unaware of anybody who got into the start lane without a map being available.

My apologies to the two competitors on the yellow course who were not issued with maps at registration. In hindsight I should have made a number of white and yellow maps available at the start for just this eventuality. Thanks for your understanding and patience while we got the maps to you. It may sound like organised chaos but I hope most people didn’t notice and we managed to maintain an outward swan like serenity while we paddled furiously below the water line keeping everything going.

Finally and last but not least, a big thank you to all the team leaders and helpers who once again willingly gave their time and effort in order to provide what we hope was an enjoyable experience for you.

Mike Thompson

WCH