DVO hosted the Midlands Championships took place on 7th September at Chinley Churn. Well done to Organiser and Planner Nicky Hart and Richard Parkin, and to all the DVO helpers, from stile putters-out to Results. Peter Cull’s photos are here, and the DVO 2025 Midlands Champions are as follows:
M21E Jake O’Donnell
M55L John Duckworth
M70L Graham Johnson
W21L Sarah Duckworth
W55L Michelle Mackervoy
Congratulations to Sally Calland who came a close 2nd in W50A at the British Sprint Championships at the University of East Anglia on August 31st. Depending on performance in the Heats, finishers were allocated to an A or B Final in the afternoon, and Francesco won M60B with Imogen winning W14B. Wendy Carlyle’s Sprints and finals photos are available here.
Well, all of a sudden it feels like winter, with more time for indoor pursuits. Why not snuggle up with a cuppa and read about the travels of our intrepid Treasurer – Helen Chiswell, for it is she – on her Two feet & two wheels blog? Or hillwalker David Pettit’s photo blog? Both are great for vicarious travel, from Thailand to the Tatras!
We have early notice of the 2026 CompassSport Cup Heats and Finals, the former on 22 February (venue TBA) and the latter once again at Pippingford Park, Ashdown Forest (Sussex) on 18 October. Have a look at the photos from the 2019 Final here.
While on diaries and indoor pursuits, I thought it worth repeating how to create a hi-res map PDF on RouteGadget (not including courses), as the interface changed a year or so ago. Thanks to Christine for these step-by-step instructions:
Instructions for the Chrome browser (PC or Mac)
– When you’re in RG, select the three vertical dots from the top right of the screen for Chrome.
– From the menu that appears, scroll to the bottom and select More Tools
– Select Developer Tools
– At the top of the Developer Tools choose, Sources, then Page
– Then you need to select the gif file in the gadget/kartat folder under the web address of the club, e.g. www.clok.routegadget.co.uk. Right click on the the name of the .gif file,
– Choose Open image in new tab, then Print it, Save to PDF or copy and paste that image into a new Word (or similar) document, turn it horizontally, fiddle with the image and borders until it fills the screen or page.
Our 3rd series of free Autumn MapRuns start this evening (as I write), continuing until 4th December. And our AGM is coming up on Wednesday 15 October in Matlock, with food and talks on this year’s Interland competition and the East Midlands Junior Squad.
Whitworth Park, Local event, Sat 11th Oct – entry on the day only
Derby Spook-O, Local event, Sat 1st Nov – entry on the day only
Shipley Park, East Midlands League event, Sun 2nd Nov – (online entry via the Start Kite opens soon)
2025 DVO Club Championships
The DVO Club Championships this year will be held at NOC’s Strawberry Hill event on Dec 21st. The Peter Bourne and Karen Jackson trophies will be respectively awarded to the fastest man and woman, and the Lithuanian amber trophy to the fastest junior. The Chris Yardley and Judy Buckley trophies are also up for grabs, criteria TBA. (They are normally awarded to the first man and woman over the line, when running our usual handicap format.) Last year’s event took place in Allestree Park, with the presentation afterwards at the Evergreen Hall – here’s a reminder of who won the various trophies & awards. Will Rob, Helen, Chris, Emily and Imogen please check you have your trophies engraved, and hand them to a Committee Member before mid December please.
Weekly Training Runs
The following weekly runs have been going for decades, but new members may not know about them. Each run has an associated WhatsApp group!
The Monday Run
This starts at 6:30 from a different pub each week. It’s normally off-road and there are 2 groups, 8–12km. Contact Sal Chaffey for details.
The Wednesday Run
Runs on a Wednesday evening start at 7pm and alternate between the Johnsons in Belper (1st & 3rd Wednesday in the month) and the Mackervoys in Allestree (2nd & 4th Wednesday). If there is a 5th Wednesday in the month, the run is a day-time one, with lunch afterwards. Contact Make Gardner for more details.
Puzzle Page by David Vincent
Solutions to June’s Puzzle: The Connections Wall
Very well done to Helen, Lester, and Graham, who had completely correct solutions, or ones that convinced me that they were acceptable alternatives, and to Nicky, who had a basically correct solution apart from one word.
Here is the solution:
Group 1: house, belt, light, peace (all can be preceded by Green)
Group 2: tip, wrote, dire, master (all are anagrams of control features)
Group 3: sunset, Mae, gold rush, wild (all associated with West)
Group 4: start, opening, go, sunrise (synonyms or metaphors for commencements)
DVO Welcomes O-bot
I was very excited last week to be the first planner in the club to practise using our new member – O-bot. For those of you who were not at the committee meeting when the purchase was approved, the idea of O-bot is to aid the planner in course design. O-bot runs the proposed course, and reports back on map accuracy (such as undergrowth and shade of green) and determines the shortest legal route.
It was this latter function that I set about testing last week in Shipley Park. I created a simple 5-control irregular pentagon course with the Start and Finish at the same point, and downloaded the map to O-bot. Ze – O-bot’s first words on powering up were to inform me that “ze”, “zis”, and “zim” were zis preferred pronouns – asked me to select a constant speed for zis run, and I chose 10 metres per second. Ze walked with me to the Start, where I uttered the obligatory “Beep, beep, beep beeeeeep!”, and ze was off!
It seemed a very short time before ze was back. I realised that I was expecting some… what? Panting? Some sign of fatigue? But ze simply gave a trill of rising notes universally accepted in this age as indicating a successfully completed task. I eagerly peered at the screen on zis back and saw…
Super! All I had to do was multiply the split time in seconds by ze’s speed, to get the distance between each control, and for the whole course. Presumably, ze could be configured to provide this data directly, but before I could ask – and just as I was peering at the screen to read the sun-glint obscured third split – ze gave another – this time downbeat – trill, walked to the wireless charging station that I’d left on the grass, and powered off. I’m somewhat sentimental (some say foolish) when it comes to daughters, pets, and, it seems, robots, but it didn’t feel right to wake zim.
Can you supply the total course distance? Email David Vincent by the end of November.
