Barnes Common Night-O Results
WinSplits – splits around the timed out crossings may not be correct
Routegadget – draw your route!
Planner’s Comments
Hopefully the cemetery wasn’t too spooky and you didn’t get too muddy in the first forest area – the recent rain didn’t help but at least the showers held off on the night! The more experienced orienteers told me definitively that it was not really muddy at all… Well done, especially for the many Night-O first-timers.
“Planner wanted for Barnes Common” read the small print at the bottom of the Wimbledon Night-O 2025 results, just over a year since competing in my first ever orienteering event – the Wimbledon Night-O 2024. Barnes is only a 15 min bike ride away for me so while I wasn’t planning on organising my first ever event quite so early, the opportunity seemed like a good one!
Unfortunately, on my first recce, many of the paths / clearings on the existing map were fully or partially grown over – over 1/3rd of the control sites chosen from the comfort of my desk at home were not usable. As the map was originally drawn over 10 years ago, a redraw was in order. A total of 15 site visits over the next 6 weeks got it completed. The new map has been drawn using LIDAR laser satellite data so hopefully it stopped you from getting too lost! The process has certainly had a positive impact on my own map reading skills at events.
With so many paths and clearings lost to brambles, I took the opportunity of opening up some new areas on the map – several controls on both courses took you to newly mapped sections not used before for orienteering, at least in the past decade. The compact nature and road crossings make it difficult to plan very long legs at Barnes but hopefully you enjoyed the challenge of the route choices I did manage to get in. In any case, everything is more difficult at night!
Big thanks to Duncan, Vinh and Mike for bringing in controls, Nathan and James hardy stalwarts on the start, and Peter doing an extended stint in the pub with so many newcomers. The evening ran very smoothly because of you.
And thank you to my mentors throughout the process – Steve for booking the pub and not getting too annoyed with all my questions, Don for taking a longer than expected stroll around the area to answer my mapping questions, and Matthias as a ‘light-touch’ controller and helping hang controls, even though he disallowed my control site inside the newly mapped camel-shaped area. Thanks also to Gordon for advice, syncing all the SI boxes so I didn’t have to and registration / download.
Thank you all for making my first go at organising and planning (and mapping) a memorable one – I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for all of the positive comments. See you all at a less muddy Battersea Park next week!
Oliver Allen
Lost Property
Blukar headtorch
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