Owls Count

This past weekend saw the final of the Compass Sport Cup and Trophy competitions. The final took place in the East Midlands forest of Blidworth. In the final details for the event was the information:

Significant areas of forest mapped as runnable have bramble and bracken growth at this time of year making the runnability slower than in areas mapped as slow run. Courses have been planned to avoid the worst areas. We strongly advise robust full leg cover.

The warning proved to be well deserved. The routes taken by many people show that sticking to the path network was the order of the day, unless you got to a section of denser forest (the darker the shade of green the more impenetrable the forest) where it was reasonably runnable.

I have not bothered to plot my route, but it is like many others drawn - path running most of the time. I made a few mistakes - at 4 I overshot the earth wall, hit the path beyond, and had to come back. Coming out of 5 I navigated as if at 6, losing about a minute working out where I was and running a bit further. I went a bit off direction in the rough open between 14 and 15 meaning I ran a bit too far circling back into the control. At 18 I came into the forest too in the wrong place and hit the control further north of the one aimed for. I did not get caught out, at 21, by the other control on the next parallel earth wall. Like many others I arrived quite a bit below 23 and had to go up the hill to it. Overall I was a long way down the results, but under double the time of GG.