This year’s Caddihoe Chase took a lot more organising than the previous events which I have organised and perhaps a lot more than other Caddihoe Chases. The Planner’s decision, for good reasons, to have two Starts each day meant more manpower requirements than usual.  Also the Red Starts were far away from Assembly and the parking area. This meant a lot of equipment had to be carried a long distance to and from the Starts.  Talking of carrying things a long way we must thank Ian Bowles, our expert carpenter, who built and erected a fence crossing point more or less in the middle of nowhere and carried all the timber to the site by himself. He also mended the stiles at the edge of the assembly area. These were built, and last used, for the 2003 Caddihoe Chase at Burrator and needed a bit of refurbishment. Unfortunately one gave way in spite of being repaired.

 I find the secret of good organisation is delegating jobs and responsibility to the right people and the Start Teams performed admirably, working at a distance and using their own initiative if things should go awry. Not that anything significant went wrong.

 The Sport Ident equipment and software performed satisfactorily under the watchful gaze of Alan Simpson and his team of experts.

 I must also thank our junior members from The Torbay Scouts who put things up, took things down, marshalled the car parking and collected a lot of the controls on both days. They also managed to run in the event and even won a few trophies.

 Nearly all the helpers managed to fit in a run on both days in between their jobs.

 Owing to the excessive number of Met Office employees in Devon OC we were able to guarantee the fine weather and this greatly contributed to the success of the event which seemed to be enjoyed by all who took part.

 Finally we must thank Mr Whitley for the use of his field (I am sure that we will be back some time), The South Devon Moorland Pony Club  and Mrs Cullen for the use of parts of the mapped area along with the Dartmoor National Park Authority who own most of the rest.

 Jill Green

 PS: Lost Property: Small pair of scissors, Pair of reading glasses +1.25 & a small compass. Contact me if you think an item may be yours and you want it back!

 Hound Tor was a new area for orienteering, and we had first use of a new map by Erik Peckett and Rod Postlethwaite. A visit a year before the event showed that in September all the lower slopes either side of the Becka Brook were unusable except on paths because of the bracken. This meant that only a rather small area was available in the western part of the map, which led to my decision to have split starts, with the Red starts east of the Becka Brook. I think this gave the most satisfactory orienteering for the longer courses. However, any reasonable course from the Red starts had to have 200m climb, so the climb ratio was higher than normal.

 I asked for Black Hill and Haytor South to be included, so there was sufficient space at high level for the long courses to have a significantly different route on the two days. Technical areas on Haytor are rather limited, so I made extensive use of the rocky bits. The boulder fields were marked and could be avoided. Though I am aware that not everyone liked the physical nature of the courses from the Red start, the winning times on all courses from Short Brown downwards were very fast, perhaps the courses should have been harder!

 I would like to thank El and Wilf Taylor, Stewart Bondi and Brian Parker for help in putting out controls and the Torbay scouts for collecting most of them. I would also like to thank El and Wilf, Alan Simpson and Martin Glew ( a non-orienteer) for path clearing before the event. I would like to thank the landowner Mrs Cullen (no relation) for arranging to open the gates into her property. I would like to thank Jill Green for coping with the split starts and Ian Bowles for his stile that gave access to the top of the private area. I would also like to thank Roger Hargreaves for not imposing too much while correcting most of my mistakes and omissions and Erik for adjusting the map to make some of my control sites acceptable.

 Mike Cullen

Controller's View

There is no doubt that Mike had something physical in mind for his courses.  He was absolutely right that in being able to get to those parts of the map that were above the “bracken line” one had to climb out of the Becka Brook valley – Mike’s twist was that for the long courses one had to do it twice and so exceeded the recommended 5%.  The junior courses and short TD 5 courses stayed on the Hound Tor portion of the map.

Thanks are due to Erik Peckett for his “arrangement” of courses onto maps of appropriate size and orientation and to Print5 for turning those round quickly.

There were some comments from competitors regarding the runnability of the gorse and bracken green screens.

Mike has mentioned that some work was carried out creating pathways through the bracken – he fails to mention that he, and others, probably cleared 3km of paths.  As to the height of the bracken, that changed, for the better if you will believe it, over the last three weeks before the event itself.  That was something that couldn’t be readily changed before maps were printed.  Whilst important to the individual competitor the height of the bracken shouldn’t have been a significant factor in route choice in my opinion.

There were some comments about control descriptions (CDs); in retrospect we should have made them larger.  Competitors were generous enough to recognize that reference to the CDs might have helped finding the control easier.

The mapping of the rock was interesting with at least seven different symbols; while the representation is as much as an art as a science there were areas where a different interpretation might have found favour.  That is not unusual for a new map.  The next iteration will benefit from your comments.  I apologise to those competitors who found the pale blue ribbon which I had mistakenly thought marked 193; I was wrong in the site and failed to remove the ribbon once the Planners site was located.  Control 42 caused many people problems on both days – the map being relatively clear but less so on the ground.

The administration of the event was ably directed by Jill Green, confidently assisted by her spouse, another Roger.  The SI team was led by the DEVON Chairman, Alan Simpson, who was only occasionally distracted by the presence of his two grandchildren.  I also thank Erik Peckett for standing in for me in “controlling” the final placement of a dozen or so controls on the south side of Hay Tor as I ran out of time after chairing the SWOA AGM.

I look forward to seeing your routes in due course in Routegadget.

Roger Hargreaves