Nowton Park 10/09/06

First and foremost many thanks to all the club helpers who made this event possible, either by helping on the day, providing advice/experience or undertaking the multitude of behind the scenes tasks required in advance. It was great to have your support as events simply will not happen without it.

Special thanks to the team who helped on the day, the smooth running of the event was in no small part down to you. Thanks to Anne for planning some excellent courses and Paul for controlling in his own inimitable style; with the team in place, I knew this bode well for a superb event.

It was great to see people trying the sport for the first time and old friends from clubs across East Anglia coming to support it; we look forward to welcoming to future events. The decision to put on a green course was spot-on and well received, so well that we needed to recycle maps.

Thanks for all the positive comments received, it makes all the time and effort worthwhile.

I started out with just three courses in mind (short & easy, a bit longer and more difficult, and a course for regular orienteers), but this grew into a set of colour coded courses, which had more to offer to everyone.

Planning has been a pleasure, and has meant a number of lovely days out at Nowton Park , helping with updating the map, and choosing control sites. Being away on business for a week shortly before the event brought its own pressures. Many thanks are due to Simon Peck, for stepping into the breach and sorting things out.

I'm so glad that everything came together, despite things getting a touch fraught at the last minute. One thing I will never, ever do again is put out controls on the morning of an event!

Thanks to Neil the organiser and Paul the controller for being so forbearing on the day. I really appreciated Paul's support and comments during the whole planning process.

From the comments I've heard, you enjoyed the courses, so thanks to the helpers and competitors for turning up, taking part and making it all worthwhile.

The number of maps was based on the turn-out at previous CATIs. As luck would have it, the weather on Sunday was superb, and it was the first event of the season in the region, so we had nowhere near the number of maps needed. We had to resort to mugging finishers and taking their maps off them.

If anyone would like a map of their course, do let Neil know and we'll post one to you.

What a nice day it turned out to be, it was good to see so many turn up especially all the visitors from other clubs around the region. This did cause a bit of a problem with the number of Green maps we had printed, my thanks to all those who gave up their map at the finish so that someone else could have a run.

Anne's original courses were called short, medium and long. However, with a bit of gentle persuation, she agreed to call them by their colour code. The next drafts I was sent had White, Yellow, Light Green & Green all that was missing was an adult beginners course, an orange soon appeared. This only added 2 extra controls to the total used, it was disappointing to see so few attempt the course. Nowton Park is an excellent area for an event aimed at beginners, the whole park is surrounded by either a 6' wall or, in a few places, fences signifying the boundary of back gardens. This means that it is not an easy task to stray off the map - except in tha case of any climbers!

Well done to Neil on his first go at organising an event. Due to his attention to detail every thing went smoothly on the day.

See you in the forest