Baddow RidgeSun 5 Nov

SOS Colour coded and ESSOL

Regional level event

Results

• • Results are now final
• • Routegadget available here

Report

Planners comments

The event of two organisers, two planners, and one controller calm throughout the changes - Eleanor Evans started the planning process earlier in the year, with a fallback of father assuming the role if family changes intervened, which they did. So the courses owe a lot to Eleanor (thanks) with development by me, and sage comments from Peter as controller. I claim the club record for the number of Finishes at an event (three if you didn’t know).

Baddow Ridge is a mosaic of ownership and of orienteering terrain, the little valleys and open woodland are a delight. The western parts are in need of a detailed map update, with holly growth more extensive than the map displays, amongst other changes. One overgrown field was mown in the days prior to the event which made the map update out of date. Climb is greater than other Straggler areas, which drew comment from some runners about the physicality of their course, reflected in longer times than other events.

Our assembly area was fine, with a drawback of the 1k walk to the start. Various options were explored, with the scout camp winning out. Long courses were finished in the west, to limit the dead running and to allow use of all parts of the map.

Heavy, persistent rain during the week onto wet ground had filled some depressions with water and restarted streams in usually dry gullies, ditches and sloping footpaths. We were fortunate to run the event in dry conditions with a moderate temperature during the day.

The variety of fungi in the woods was remarkable and beautiful. Squirrels were clearly enjoying the chestnut harvest. The woodland still bears witness to the storm of 1987, with some rootstocks now rotting into small knolls but lying tree trunks still presenting a hazard to navigation.

That wraps up terrain events for 2023, great thanks to the Stragglers who have volunteered so much and in so many ways to deliver orienteering
challenges and pleasure and to the runners, whose enjoyment and feedback make it all worthwhile.

May you run in sunlit forests throughout 2024.

Colin West SOS

Controller’s Comments

Baddow is a tile puzzle of richly featured woodland separated by residential blocks and out of bounds areas. Hence Colin’s decision to have 3 finishes to allow the longer courses to explore as much as possible of the different “tiles” with a minimum of dead running.

We were lucky to have good weather on the day, but rain in the days preceding did turn many “dry” features into wet ones. This led to confusion in finding control 136, especially for Green runners, as the mapped wet and dry ditches were both very wet at the event.

I must own up to not noticing the discrepancy between map and ground at control 122 (knoll near a fence corner). Ahead of the event I was more concerned about the vegetation, with high bracken in some areas tending to obscure features. Control 215 was re-located during the planning process to avoid being unfairly hidden in vegetation, but ended up being hung a bit further from the stream than many expected.

It was not anyone’s intention to make the courses unusually demanding, but winning times were on the long side, with some participants getting excellent value for money in terms of minutes spent orienteering per pound of entry fee. I hope you all enjoyed the experience nevertheless.

The final results have been adjusted so that the timed-out road crossing is fully “timed out” for everyone, and thanks to Lyn West for laboriously correcting split times to compensate for a couple of controls that were left on BST.

Finally, thanks to the SOS team for staging the event, especially Julie for stepping in as organiser at a relatively late stage and Colin who similarly took over the planning.

Peter Woods (WAOC)

Last updated: Sun 12 November, 2023

Overview

Mature woodland over a wide area; a full range of colour coded courses available.

Location Info

Near: Danbury
Lat,Lng: 51.72923,0.57121
OS Grid Ref: TL777065
Postcode: CM3 4AU
What3Words: ///buzzer.faced.blown

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