Organisers Comments

This was my first try at organising an event, and almost everything seemed to go very well. This was thanks in large measure to the help and advice received from others, especially Liz and Alan Yeadon. I had read in some organisers notes somewhere that, if everything is running smoothly, then the organiser is the one with not much to do, and this certainly seemed to be the case. Having a team of helpers who knew what needed to be done, and got on and did it, left me with plenty of time to stroll around and worry about what might be going wrong, without anything much actully doing so. So my secret hope that it would be such a disaster that no-one would ever ask me to organise anything ever again has been dashed!

The String course was one thing I almost forgot about, probably because like many experienced orienteers I'd never actually done one myself. Several names had been suggested for planning and running it, but all turned out to be unavailable for one reason or another. This meant that I was on site a week before the big day, planning it myself and drawing up a map. I did wonder whether I'd made it too long, or led the tinies through too many brambles. Reg and Ann Parker, who ran it on the day, assured me that the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.

There were apparently a number of comments that the signposting to the event was very good. This was partly down to Liz and Alan who supplied the signs and advice on where to set them out, and partly due to my wife who helped put them out. She also dashed up to the roundabout on the A30 near Blackbush when I was told that the grid reference on the BOF website was incorrect, and put some extra signs there. This error was due to the need to pass details to BOF before the courses, and the route in, had been finalised.

The only real drama came later on, when the parents of a 14 year old girl reported that she had not returned from the Green course after more than 2 hours. As time went on we became more and more concerned, especially after everyone else had finished and the course closing time had passed with still no sign of her. Search parties were organised, but failed to find her, and eventually I called the police to report her missing. Fortunately, at least 4 hours after starting and about 5 minutes after two policeman had arrived, she strolled back in through the start area, quite unaware that anyone had been looking for her! All's well that ends well, but this has highlighted the need for a more formal procedure for dealing with overdue runners, even if it doesn't happen very often.

Once again, many thanks to all those who helped, especially those who stayed late in order to help search for our mssing runner.

Ken Ricketts

Organiser