Northern Championships planners' comments

In our opinion the area covered by Gummer’s How and Blake Holme is one of the best in the Lake District. The three contrasting parts provide lots of variety and most of the terrain is tough - both physically and technically. Martin Bagness’s map is excellent and legible. There is a lot of rock on the ground and the map (rightly) concentrates on the contours, only showing the significant cliffs.

We took advantage of the vote at the BO AGM to provide 1:7500 scale maps for all except courses 1, 2 and 3. Most of the comments to us about this were positive although one or two would have preferred 1:10000.

The assembly area was the only possibility, given the parking, with enough space for the essential facilities. That gave a rather rough final few hundred metres for the courses and we had to provide a taped route to the last control for the White and Yellow.

We aimed to provide challenging Championship courses and we were impressed by some of the winning times. In such an area, it is hard to provide suitable courses for the younger juniors and the elder veterans but we did our best. Most appreciated the challenge although a few found it rather too tough. We followed the latest BO Course Length Ratios but we probably should have made greater allowance for the fact that older competitors tend to be slowed relatively more than younger ones by difficult underfoot conditions. Well done to everyone who finished their courses.

We are grateful to the controller Ray Collins for checking our work and for his support. Also, we had a great bunch of helpers who put out SI boxes in the morning and collected in controls after you had all gone.

David & Miriam Rosen
Planners