Results for Hampstead Heath District Event - Sunday 27 September 2009

These are FINAL results. 

Controller's Comments 

It was a pleasure to control this event. Greg and Jon produced courses which made good use of the best bits of the Heath and avoided the worst of the nettles and brambles. I heard many complimentary comments at the finish from orienteers ranging in standard from British team members to newcomers.

Thanks to Miriam who helped me with the control checking in the morning, we had visited all the controls in good time before the first start. Our mobile phones came in useful when resolving a few last minute problems.

Neil's organisation was very efficient as normal, and I was impressed that with only a relatively small number of helpers, all of them were able to run as well.

David Rosen
SROC

Planner's Comments

Planning on Hampstead Heath can be surprisingly tricky even though there are dozens, if not hundreds, of potential control sites. A summer event has to avoid the brambles, nettles and bracken – and several ‘armchair planned’ sites proved to be far from ideal after a preliminary visit. Then there is the balance of open areas against the wooded parts, not forgetting of course the ‘maze’ of out of bounds in the centre which often catches people out (including both of us on previous visits). Linking the different parts of the heath, particularly Sandy Heath for the longer courses means trying to ensure runners use the marked zebra crossings and not run out in front of the traffic in the heat of the moment. And then the profusion of paths can make route choice a bit too obvious, again particularly for the longer, more technical courses. 

But several visits to the heath – almost always in weather as nice as we had on the day – and a number of planning meetings in the Shakespeare’s Head in Holborn, together with sound advice from David Rosen (who knows the heath like the back of his hand) produced, we hope, some pretty good courses. We tried to do something a bit different in places and I think we succeeded overall - at least, we had some favourable feedback on the day. As far as I know the only adverse comment was to do with the mapping of paths, which is probably always going to be a problem on such a public area. 

There was a minor hiccup in putting out controls: the one on the lawn near Kenwood House was removed by the head ranger, but we managed to sort that out and placate him and before the start. [Memo to future planners: it might be best to avoid the very public areas north of the fence in front of the house]. But overall we hope everybody – young and old, experienced orienteers and those trying it for the first time – had a great day out on Hampstead Heath on such a glorious day.

Greg Birdseye + Jon Chandler 

Organiser's Comments

Another fantastic day for a run on the Heath, and for many of you it may have been your first time, as out of 144 participants, almost 40% weren’t linked to any orienteering clubs. For those with no previous experience to orienteering, I hope you enjoyed the event, and that you didn’t get lost by too many paths! 

As ever, we are hugely thankful that the Corporation of London permit us to use the Heath, as well as English Heritage for the longer courses that strayed in to the Kenwood House parklands.

The most amusing question I was asked as I collected in the controls was what were the stakes and boxes they saw scattered around the Heath, were they ‘water monitoring stations’? 

I had a number of people asking about where they can orienteer next …… visit the Events page at http://www.seoa.org.uk to see events put on by both ourselves and the other London clubs over the next few months.

Lost property: one branded bum-bag. To claim, email brand and colour to neilbrooks@msn.com.

Summary Results (no splits)

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String Course Results 

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