Saturday 27 October
Planner's Report
Wootton Hill is a new map but the area is not new to orienteering. Along with the woodland of Dodpen Hill and Wyld Warren to the northwest, it was mapped decades ago as Charmouth Forest by Weymouth Orienteers. Those with long memories will recall it was once used for the Caddihoe Chase. You may also remember it was when the OS was changing from imperial to metric and the contour interval was given as 7.62m - that’s 25 feet in old money!
Attendance was rather low mainly due to half-term, but it was good to see interest from other SWOA clubs. Those who came enjoyed a real treat although the day got off to a perplexing start with the siting of the club tent on unforgiving ground. Have you ever watched a dozen intelligent single-minded people trying to agree the right way to erect a tent? Don’t ask.
The wood comprises a variety of conifer and broadleaf trees with some rhododendron growth in central parts. The pearl is a beautiful area of fast, runnable beech wood in the southeast. All courses visited this little gem and Orange and Light Green had six legs crossing it. It also caused our only worry as when Mary and I set out the stakes we saw autumn leaves had obscured several paths on Yellow and Orange. Feeble attempts to recreate the paths failed miserably but no-one got seriously lost! Orange runners also seemed to like the big earthwalls and banks used here as occasional handrails. Because it’s a small wood Green runners had to loop twice around the far north but there were no grumbles; indeed, the long legs were much appreciated.
Smiley faces appeared in a few places on the White course. Two close parallel paths started near control 4 (148) and it was crucial to follow the less obvious one – smileys pointed the way. Between 9 (181) and 10 (182) there was a very awkward configuration of paths, earthwalls and gaps, so smileys again. White runners naturally make mistakes and learn from them, but they shouldn’t result from known ambiguities on map or ground.
The Orange course through the beech wood in the southeast -->
The event nearly didn’t happen but flexible teamwork kept it going. I was unable to focus on planning for several weeks so David Bland became co-planner as well as controller. He also helped organise while Tamsin was away - thank you David. A very successful joint effort – well done Team West Dorset!
Finally, many thanks to everyone who came to help and/or compete. I hope you all had a nice time in this lovely little wood!
Mike Kite
Thank you to Chris Branford for the photos below. You'll find the full set on his Flickr pages.
