Event Details
Club: | BM MBO |
Event Name: | Black Mountains MBO - Event 6 Wye Valley |
Date: | 02/10/16 |
Format: | MBO Score |
Mapping: | Ordnance Survey |
Time Limit: | 3 1/2 |
National League: | - |
League: | Black Mountains MBO (Round 6 of 10) |
Electronic Punch: | No |
Event Report
The plan was to move the focus of the event area to the east in order to use the tracks, bridleways and green lanes in and around Newland. With Redbrook as the focus there is a challenging figure of eight loop that takes in the ‘fossil meander’ of the Wye some nice woodland, Coxbury lane and the Burial Path between Coleford and Newland church. I estimated and tested the loop, taking around 2 hours to complete it. So that gives 1.5 hours to get to and from Trellech, but really only likely to be attractive to those with a seriously good pair of legs given the climb involved.
Heavy rain on Saturday made the previously hard surfaces suddenly pretty soft so the going became a bit slower all round which made taking on the Newland area more of a challenge. Looking at the results quite a few riders took on the loop but from the south end rather than from Redbrook as I had thought would happen. The commitment of the loop appeared to result in relatively few controls being picked up on the return journey on the west side of the river. The spread of controls was perhaps too big given the wet tracks with the top score being 20 out of 25 controls. (Ideally I think the top riders should be getting 23 or 24 out of 25.)
Well done to everyone especially the top riders on the day,
1st Ian Cartwright 361 pts
2nd Marcus Pinker 350 pts
3rd Michael Holloway 336 pts
1st female was Ivona Szmyd with 305 pts.
These results have really spiced up the 2016 league, with only 14 pts separating the top 5 riders so it’s all to play for at our final event in Gilwern in a few weeks’ time. Sion will publish the latest league standings in a newsletter by the end of the week
Apologies number 9 was in the wrong place by circa 150-200m. I had recced it from the east (non-wooded) side and went by the woodland edge. Note to self for next time-cross reference especially what appear to be really solid line features.
There were some issues with taping sites. I used the yellow/black tape as per our recent events. Unfortunately autumn leaves and sunshine appeared to make seeing the tape difficult. I had taped every site with either 2 (on big identifiable sites such as gates and finger posts) or 3 (Trees and less obvious features) pieces of tape. The aim being to have a ‘spare’ where removal was likely especially around the huntin, shootin, fishin estate near Newland and to try to make tape as obvious as possible given the different directions a control could be approached from. Clearly that was not totally successful. Red and white may be the answer but removal before the event is more likely leaving the site totally unmarked and therefore more difficult to find.
Thanks for help and support from Sion, Amanda’s catering team and Jeff for help when sport ident decided to go AWOL in the middle of the day.