SE Champs WeekendSat 15 Nov, 2025 - Sun 16 Nov, 2025

Binton Woods on 15/11/2025

SE Night Champs and SE Middle Distance Champs

Regional level event

Terrain type: Woodland & Forest

Results

• • SE Nights Results
• • SE Nights Medalists
• • SE Middle Results
• • SE Middles Medalists
• • SE Night RouteGadget
• • SE Middle RouteGadget

Report

Note we have a drinks bottle lost property. Contact the Organiser.

Planner's comments

Pete Couldery

Controller's comments

Using the same area for two events in a weekend can be challenging. GO reduced the risk of errors by having a single organiser, planner and controller for both, but this increases the workload and can make timetables quite tight. The new map, of Binton Woods and Coach Bottom, areas not used before, needed some additional work. We tried to reduce the overlap between the two events by using Britty Wood only for the night event (after the road crossing) and Binton only for the day event (before the road crossing).

Planning for autumn events can be difficult. High bracken makes control sites difficult to find (it was checked 12 days before the event, and mostly retained on the map), and means that path routes are often the quickest. Then at some point falling leaves can obscure minor paths completely and make vegetation boundaries less distinct, but also make other areas (like the coppiced woodland) more runnable.  This meant that Pete had to continue to make changes until shortly before the printing deadline.

For the night event we tried to use features that would remain fair, even if the bracken stayed high.  Some vegetation boundaries and less-distinct re-entrants were ruled out.

The Sunday event wasn't originally intended to be the SEOA Middle Championships; it isn't an ideal area for a middle race, with in places plenty of line features but few point features. Combined with the bracken this made producing good middle distance courses more challenging.  Winning times for most courses were about right, although the Green course was a bit short, because it was not quite up to the right standard in places - apologies. I also have to take responsibility for the time-out at the road crossing being 90 seconds, which was probably too long; it isn't possible to easily vary a time-out by course, so the limit has to work for everyone from fast M21s to slower W80s, and traffic varies with both time of day and the weather.

Most people at both events said that they enjoyed their course, and the organisation needed little input from me and ran smoothly.

Alan Wallis (SN)

Organiser's comments

It was a little daunting taking on the organisation of this weekend (we originally had two organisers, one day each) but I did it deliberately as I knew Pete and Alan would be utterly reliable on the course planning side of things, as well as very helpful to me organisationally on the days. And with the support of the ever-helpful Team GO, supplemented by a couple of most welcome volunteers from other clubs, we managed to hold it all together with just 20 volunteers on top of the 3 officials.

I hope you enjoyed running on new areas. The Coach Bottom area next to Myrtle's Courtyard is a part of the private Hampton Estate, and we are very grateful to the Estate for allowing our incursion. Binton Woods and Britty Wood are also owned by the Estate - however they are public access areas, so you can revisit them at your leisure if you wish. We hope to use them all at a better time of year for bracken in future years.

Jeremy Wilde

Last updated: Tue 18 November, 2025

Overview

These Championships will be the first ever use for orienteering of Binton Woods and Coach Bottom. The Night Champs will also make use of Britty Wood (which has been used before with Puttenham Common).

Location Info

Near: Guildford
Lat,Lng: 51.203,-0.7011
Postcode: GU10 1JH
What3Words: ///lazy.dries.straw

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