I think my first night-O event was in 1969 in Ruislip Woods on a black and white photocopy of a 1:25000 OS map. The map had on it tracks, deciduous trees, coniferous trees and little else. Punches were ink stamps. I had a normal hand torch.

On Saturday night we had full-colour, pre-marked custom-drawn maps at 1:7500 with electronic punching. We ran a computer, download and results printing off a car battery. We nearly printed extra maps on the night. And the car started first time. Awesome.

Early on we had a herd of spectators in the start/finish arena but they decided that night-O was even less of a spectator sport than day-O and they moved off. I'm sorry if you had to vault them en route.

Many thanks to all that helped.

James Crawford, Organiser

and Planner...

Jim Morris, Planner

and Controller's ramblings...

Chapel Common is a compact area that appears to lend itself well to night orienteering. It has lots of good control features, generally good running and few man-eating brambles. It is also quite safe for the less experienced as it is hard to run off the map, even more so now there is a substantial fence around the perimeter.

I'm happy with the general times on the olive and navy courses. It would have been nice to see a few more on the ochre course but the overall attendance, over 50, is a good result, so GO are happy. Hopefully you were too.

Lastly, the Organiser, not a regular night orienteer, thinks SENiLe courses should be renamed: Almond, Pistachio and Hazelnut.......

Keith Tonkin (GO), Controller