Thorncombe Wood TrailO event
Saturday 29th February 2020
PreO control E3 (Depression) / A2
(Depression, N part)
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I became aware of the delights of Thorncombe Wood. I was immediately aware of its suitability for Elite level TrailO and was delighted to learn that Mike Kite intended to map it, initially for a permanent course for the Dorset County Council Local Nature reserve.
Fortunately, there is a good network of hard surfaced paths in the wood which enables wheelchair users to visit the area, there are plenty of features easily visible through the lovely open woodland, and an excellent café in the Visitor Centre, together with a small classroom unit which we could use for Registration and results processing. All this made it ideal for a TrailO competition.
For such a complex area of swallet holes and contour features, it was a great advantage there was Lidar coverage which made Mike’s job as mapper much easier, although it took a lot of time and skill to adjust these contours so that they can be interpreted by your average orienteer in competition mode.
So it was that I conceived the idea of holding a TrailO day in Thorncombe, with courses in both disciplines, classic TrailO (now renamed PreO, short for PrecisionO) and the newer TempO discipline, a selection of timed controls, with multiple problems and the added possibility of zero controls.
TempO is very heavy on volunteer helpers, with ideally 3 helpers per station, although we got away with 3 helpers for every 2 stations. There is now a mobile phone app for timing TempO competitions, but for WIM’s first ever TempO, we used stopwatches.
Starting from the footpath adjacent to Hardy’s Cottage, the TempO course had six stations, along the footpath up to the picturesque Rushy Pond and then across the heathland to a timed control for the PreO course, before descending back into the wood itself for the 21 controls on the PreO course.
The event was used as a Selection Event for the Great Britain TrailO team for the 2020 European Championships to be held in Finland in May. It was an important guide to current form for the selectors, particularly as the British TrailO Championships which should have been held alongside the BOC Long & Relay championships in mid -March, has just had to be cancelled.
After seemingly weeks of heavy rain and gales, we were lucky to have a sunny day, if rather cool and windy, for the event, although torrential overnight rain made one of the unsurfaced side paths too muddy for wheelchair access, so one control had to be omitted.
The event seems to have gone down very well with the TrailO community. Numbers were slightly lower than expected for a number of reasons (the closure of the M25 didn’t help) but they all loved the woods, enjoyed the courses, ate the café out of Dorset Apple cake, and were hugely grateful to the army of WIM members helping on the day. There were some very appreciative posts on the TrailO Facebook page afterwards.
To all those who helped at TempO stations, guarded and assisted the two wheelchair users, ran the start and finish, and typed in the results into my laptop for me, my grateful thanks.
Particular thanks go to Chris Branford, who acted as Sherpa, carrying kit around the woods when Mike and I set out out the course in less than ideal conditions on Friday afternoon (at least the rain wasn’t heavy) and who fetched in all the TempO course at the end of the event.
And of course, I am enormously indebted to Mike Kite, who happily adjusted his map when I asked him for modifications particular to TrailO, and who acted as the event controller.
The area is so good that I can easily get a totally different course out of it next year: the course is armchair planned already!
Dick Keighley
From the mapper/Controller
Thorncombe Wood has been a pet project of mine since 2018. I've mapped it, planned a FootO event and set up a permanent course here. However, I'd never controlled TrailO and there was a lot to learn.
Precise flag placement demands precise mapping and many tweaks to the map were required. In FootO it's not crucial if a spur or depression is a teeny bit wonky: you just find it, see the flag & dib the box. In TrailO fine detail has to be very accurate as the many bumps & hollows may host several flags. Trail orienteers have to interpret quite small ground shapes as they are trying to identify which, if any, of the flags matches the description.
Lidar is brilliant and Thorncombe would have been a nightmare to map without it! However, subtle landforms may still be left off due to undrawn intermediate contours. PreO control E4/A3 generated much discussion which reflected the difficulty of visualising hillsides from below. 2.5m Lidar contours don't reveal the exact shape of the slope because small changes in gradient are simply too fine - a common problem with gently undulating terrain. Variations which might be shown by 50cm or 1m intervals are obscure at 2.5m, and form lines can clutter where clarity is wanted.
My thanks to Dick for patiently educating me in the dark arts of TrailO. Congratulations too on staging an excellent event. The feedback I got from experienced TrailO customers was overwhelmingly appreciative, even from the sharper critics! I also echo his thanks to the WIM volunteers without whom it would have been a non-event.
Mike Kite
Elite PreO Course Standard PreO Course
At the PreO Start
Background: looking E from the E8/A6 viewing point after the event