This was my first big event to plan; which, together with it being GO's first use of SI - in a score event to boot - made for a testing time for the team. Living in London coupled with a rapid increase in the demands of the job made for interesting personal project planning on my part. I am extraordinarily grateful to Robin for his helpful and challenging comments as controller, and his stamina in getting round all the controls; Alastair for his unflapping "been there and learned from it" organising abilities and for those two and Jim Morris for the helping in hanging and collecting of the control sites. The physical distance was not a problem - Robin and I conspired with MI5 style map drops at junctions on the A3, only physically meeting the day before the event. But if anyone doubts what is involved in putting this together using cyberspace, I counted some 183 emails in my O-folder since June !

Waggoner's is a lovely area, with very mixed terrain and a huge choice of control sites. I would have preferred a more central start/finish; but with it south in the area close to the car park I had a number of aims. We decided not to offer a 45 minutes score, so needed an event that would appeal and be challenging to younger and older legs. We also wanted to ensure that nobody could visit all the controls in the area; thus forcing choices to be made. I also wanted to use some parts that have not been used before over to the eastern side. In order to balance out the potential scores between the elite and the rest like me, we skewed the scoring. The logic was to have the 20 points close to the start, the 10 points in the middle and the 30 points in the far NW. I then muddled it up a little to give a few 30's close to hand, and to challenge choice on the loops that could be attempted.

I had a number of pleasing comments about the challenging and enjoyable nature of the area and course, and also about brain overload in sorting out the scoring on the run. I did think about grouping the controls (1 to 10 being 10 points, etc) but had already got quite a long way with map overprinting. Interestingly, I shadowed my 9 year old daughter, Rosina, who on the way to start, had made the assumption from the control descriptions that 1 to 10 were close at hand, and therefore 5 and 10 were worth going to as they were worth 30 ... she planned her route accordingly and ended up with 170 points. It was good to see quite a lot of juniors and oldies scoring well, and that the club competition was close.

For those interested in stats, I will try and do some useful analysis around controls visited etc for future score planners and post them on the website. For interest the winner's route was:

S, 7, 3, 4, 5,11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 23, 24, 27, 25, 22

I had concerns about the Mulle overprinted maps; my technique was variable at best and there was some smudging and moving of controls. I checked each of the 400 or so maps rejecting those I wouldn't have found good enough myself . I heard no complaints; I hope this didn't spoil any of your runs. I'm happy to advise anyone else who needs to use this old but pragmatic and cost effective technology. Finally, my planner's learning point: when putting out SI control stakes using a rucksac, put them in point upwards. I didn't on Saturday, with the result of losing a stake completely when going through some light green. Clearly nobody chose the route between 17 and 21 such as I did, as stake 197 should have been quite easy to spot!

Gary Simmons