Our once-only August Bank Holiday White Rose substitute, by Sal Chaffey
The White Rose is a 3-day event hosted by our sister Yorkshire orienteering clubs on August Bank Holiday, but this year it couldn’t take place for reasons of forest access. Hence the Golden Rose: low-key events in Derbyshire named after the golden rose of our county flag!
For the Saturday race, DVO commissioned a PeakRaid-style MapRun from our former members Paul and Andy who run Explorer Events. Youlgrave Playing Field was a great base, as we have a new Permanent O Course there, which is available as a MapRun (20 control Score course). We hired the Cricket Pavilion and cut a deal with local business PeakFeast to supply lunch time homity pies.
Paul suggested creating a 40-control Score course with 60, 90 and 120 minute options, all using the same map. This suited the range of ages and abilities, and for some people it was their first MapRun.
Top-3 placers on each course were:
120 Minutes (full results)
Andrew Young of Belper Harriers with 600 points running 18.7km
Alan Billington of Belper Harriers with 580 points running 19km
Johnathan Whilock of POTOC with 560 points running 22.5km
90 Minutes (full results)
Andrew Powell of DVO with 540 points 16.5km
Simon Brister of DVO with 440 points 13.4km
Emily Powell of DVO with 380 points 11.6km
60 Minutes (full results)
Jack Kane POTOC 160 points 6.9km
Elaine Smith NOC 160 points 6.1km
Peter Cholerton NOC 160 points 6.1km
I had a great run, but mental maths wasn’t good as I did my calculations from 120 mins rather than 90, and realised I still had 5km to go on a dodgy knee at T minus 20 rather than T minus 50! So 220 penalty points. Hey ho, I got some nice photos!
PeakFeast in the village delivered our order of homity pies and coleslaw at 11am prompt, so many pies were still warm when eaten!
The 1:25000 scale was a little confusing in terms of navigating the exits to the playing field, as it’s impossible to show micro-detail at that scale, so a lot of people – myself included – chose to exit via the road. Here, the Permanent Course Map at 1:1250 was useful for showing the various exits from Assembly. Thinking about it, 1:1250 is 20 x enlarged from 1:25000, the field at this scale being the size of a postage stamp!
Some of us camped at the Aldwark Beer Festival on the Saturday night, enjoying craft ale (‘Farmageddon 5.2%’), artisanal pizzas and a bit of a dance just to get the blood flowing again.
Blue skies welcomed us to Bakewell, just a little bit ahead of the tourists throngs! The morning’s races started across the road from the Recreation Ground, straight into some housing with alleyway route choices before the timed-out crossing on the A6 and negotiating the hoards by the river.
Weir Bridge was more crowded than ever, now that the padlocks are to be relocated next month, and I had to give way to two mountain bikers. I tried to avoid the narrow alleyways, remembering Macclesfield Urban, when they used a green screen to show areas of town affected by the monthly Treacle Market!
It was nice to relax in the gap between events, but rain was predicted, so David put out the Part 2 controls early, so people could start before the showers. The Start Team moved their kit onto the Rec for Part 2, and we used the same Finish for both races.
Sure enough the showers came and we migrated fully into the shelter of the toilet block. Download had a busy day, and an extra laptop was needed to work out the total times!
Because of everyone’s eagerness to avoid the rain – and a very efficient Download Team – we were able to do the prize-giving at 2:30, with male and female winners as below.
Long
Benjamin Kyd, MDOC
Megan Harrison, EPOC
Medium
Matt White, LEI
Judith Cudden, YHOA
Short
Colin Best, SYO
Ayako & Lilika Yokoyama-Nichols, independent
Well done everyone! I think the event officials were relieved everything went off without an accidents on such a busy day. Here’s David our Planner and Sophie his daughter and control-hanging assistant!
Our Control Collecting Team soon got the 30 or so controls in, and I took the opportunity to ‘pose’ a kite on the Weir Bridge! Had we put one there in reality, it would have been Farmageddon [please excuse beer festival pun]! The padlocks are now in the process of being moved to Thornbridge Hall, adding to its self-proclaimed allure as “The Quirkiest Stately Home in the UK”!
