Planner's & Organiser's Comments

The idea was born in late July when we visited Milton Maize Maze near Cambridge. It just had to be done!

Two weeks later we had a map and tentative permissions for an evening trial event & the Saturday open event. It took some negotiating: the event had to be held after their season was over as the maze has been open to the public until 10.30pm every Saturday night through September, but any later in the year and Tom wouldn’t let us in.

The trial event worked well & gave a good idea of running speed, but highlighted the potential for head on collisions, for blinding with headtorches, as well as the clarity issue for people who were colour blind – hence the need to pass on the left, tone down halogen lights and the choice of map colours.

I had great fun planning the courses, looking for the “interesting” routes, trying to get the optimum routes the same distance for the qualifiers and getting the right distances for the final races.

My favourite bit was coming up with a playlist to play over the tannoy system – hopefully it added to the atmosphere & didn’t detract from the races.

I had a great team of helpers on the day, & a very supportive controller, without whom the event would not have gone ahead.

So, thanks to Tom (farmer), Neil (controller), the Chasers & others who gave up their time to help (especially Fraser who was also my taxi on the day) and get the controls in & site cleared by 9.30pm, congratulations to Dave Peel & Toni O’Donovan & get well wishes to Shane Ohly & my other patient (sorry I don’t know your name).

See you next year (did I just say that out loud?)!

Cath.