Chris Curtis Web Site

I went up to Darlington for an important meeting with a couple of colleagues.

Our journey back was the stuff of legends.

We were two trains behind one that was trapped beneath fallen overhead wires. Nothing could move north or south on the very busy East Coast main line. After sitting in the station for an hour, and having a free cup of coffee, we were all put off the train so it could be sent back north and another brought in. Peterborough station was becoming dangerous with trains full of people arriving every few minutes, with no way to go further south, and indications that the line would be closed for at least a day. The railway found buses to start ferrying people past the problem, but it was obvious that there would never be enough buses to cope, and that as it was already mid-evening, the bus drivers would soon reach their maximum hours and the buses would stop running.

Our spirits lifted when an enterprising train crew with a diesel decided to make a break down a branch line to Cambridge where we could find a train to London on a different line, and hundreds of us piled aboard for a free trip across the fens, only to be turned back a few miles from Cambridge as network rail refused permission for us to go any further.

Back at Peterborough, we ambushed a taxi and we headed across the fens again to Cambridge where, eventually, after another train was cancelled, we got on a train that stopped 22 times before finally reaching London, and was filled to the brim with other refugees who had found all sorts of interesting ways to get across to Cambridge too.

There was a real outbreak of “blitz spirit”, with relaxed chatter and humour as well as helpfulness from complete strangers who were “in it together” and our cross-country adventure still got us into London many hours before those who waited for the “bus replacement” services. I managed to reach home about 6 hours late.

I cannot help the feeling that the country is falling apart. Accidents happen, but our public systems have been so starved that there is no capacity for sensible or quick response when things go wrong.

Today was the club handicap. This is an annual event where runners are given start times based on their averages over the year so that if everyone runs as they have been all season, all runners should finish at the same moment. This gives the event two sources of excitement. Firstly a chance for people who do not usually win things to do so, especially favouring people who have been inconsistent and so are often beginners. Secondly, the thrill of a “first past the post” race rather than a time trial as is usual in orienteering. To my amazement, I won it last year, mainly because I ran the course without making any mistakes. The tradition is that last year’s winner plans this year’s course. With a lot of help, and learning a great deal in the process, I did plan this event. Today was the day to bring weeks of thought, fieldwork and map-marking to fruition and make it happen.

I was out of the house by 7am, but the morning was already hot with strong sun from a cloudless sky. By 8am we were placing controls around Southwater Country Park. The temperature was already in the mid-20s and climbing fast. The park was full of dog walkers and joggers and by the time the controls were set the watersports people were setting up on the lake. I needed a lot of water simply after walking round the course. It was going to be tough for the runners.
The main course was organised in “loops” – two for the green course runners and three for those on blue. We also had single loop orange and yellow courses. This gave us a central area with a start lane, a map swap area and the finish. Orienteers began to arrive while we were setting up the area and soon there was a rush of starts – almost too many for me to cope with.

It was strange to watch the event unfold, knowing the course so well but not taking part. People would appear, run through and swap maps then disappear again. About 20 minutes after the last start the adult winner ran in, followed soon after by the junior winner. Then within minutes, crowds of people finishing together – so the handicapping seemed to work well.
People made kind comments about the courses and seemed to enjoy them.

I did enjoy planning and want to do it again. A few thoughts about this event from the planner’s point of view.

1. I learnt (after a few early tries) that the important thing is not the control sites you can pick, but the routes between them. Increasingly, I began thinking about which routes across the terrain were interesting, and especially, which offered real route choices, then looked for suitable features to be control sites at the end of the route.

2. If you put a route straight across a lake, especially if you are careful with the placement of the controls at each end, you present a very stark route choice – which way round the lake to go! I planned loop C to try to tempt some runners to go clockwise and some anticlockwise round the lake from the start. I was delighted to watch good orienteers go in both directions – it would be really interesting to know which way turned out to be best and why people chose as they did.

3. I looked to put routes through different terrain – Southwater has lots of meadows, some steep slopes and fairly dense, young woodland and scrub. My early plans had too many routes, one after another, across meadows, or inside the woodland. I do not think I was sophisticated enough to consistently think through having very different technical challenges on each leg (e.g. being forced to use bearings, then read contours, then aim off) but trying to alternate short legs in woodland with long open legs, slope with flat etc. had this effect. Though with a big lake in the middle of the map to orientate on, it was an area where you could do without a compass.

4. There were other types of route choice to play with in the terrain – this was a fairly “green” area, so some of the legs should have caused people to weigh up the risks of going straight and maybe getting stuck against easy but much longer routes. Judging by the number of scratches and cuts at the finish, many orienteers took at least some of the risks in order to save distance.

5. Course lengths were a little short but there was added challenge in some of the slope and dense scrub and, as it turned out, in the intense heat of the day.

6. Planning makes you understand a map and terrain better than almost anything else and it does take a lot of thought and time, but it is worth it. I am keen to plan again – maybe a SOG in the autumn or spring.

Today was the major summer event for Southdowns Orienteers – the “3-in-1 O-ringen”. Three orienteering courses on the same day.



As I had promised to help, I was down at Tulleys Farm, near Crawley, bright and early for my first run. Although all the really good runners were aiming to do three green courses, while people of my standard were mostly doing light green, I decided to stick with my normal level and set off on my first green course of around 4km. I simply flew to the first control, very confident, then looped around the second, losing time, and then settled into the course. The Tulley’s Farm Green course had several long straight runs across fields, as well as a few technical controls. Considering the calibre of the competition I did reasonably well, though more than 15 minutes off my personal target time. Winsplits shows I was fairly consistent, never being lost, but much slower than the better runners.

There was not time to run again before I was on car park duty, but I felt well and was keen to go out again – perhaps I could have pushed it more on the first run.

I prepared my second course and had everything ready, then did an hour and a half in the car park. This was not too demanding, and pleasant in the warm sun and breeze, with a chance to chat with various folks who wandered by.

I set off into Worth North. Again, I was fast to the first control, confident and feeling full of beans. I made a hash of the second control – taking a bearing that landed me on 3 and having to go back to two first. Eventually, I found myself in the damp, dark area that looks like Swedish forest. I felt the doubt rising fast as I did not find the control instantly, but I forced myself to go steadily and not go into “headless chicken mode”. I was slow, but I found it and moved on.

Fortunes were a little mixed. My bearings were often poor, but I am becoming convinced that Worth Forest does bad things to compasses. At one point it was swinging more than 40 degrees when I moved it slightly – it does not usually do that. Whether it was the high power lines that cross the forest, or iron in the ground, I do not know. Again Winsplits shows a consistent run – though much slower than most of the field. i was never lost and made sensible route choices, though I did not have the finesse in executing routes that I would like. I have to admit that I was extremely tired by the last part of the course, though generally I thought my fitness was better than before. I was running freely quite often, and feeling more flexible and responsive than usual. I made a hash of the last control, coming out at 90 degrees from the correct route before I realised. This made me so annoyed with myself that I sprinted to the finish (only 60m away) and was the fastest in the field over that leg! I finished much lower down on that course than at Tulley’s. The field for the green alone was well over 100 and some extremely high quality runners too (including Sarah Rollins) and the tired legs showed.

It was too late to run again, and I was not too disappointed at this.

I thought it was a great day. Lots of people from complete beginners to top internationals, good courses and great terrain. I was pleased that I ran almost all of what I estimate was over 10km, though I could and should have done better. That 60 minute target for green still seems challenging, and it is humbling to realise that quite a few folks today did three of them in under 30 minutes each.

What a difference a few months makes. When I first visited Southwater Country Park, near Horsham, to start planning the club handicap it was muddy, very slippery and was nondescript areas of shrub and woodland surrounding two lakes and acres of close-mown grass. The April weather was cold and it even snowed while I was there. Today, I went back for the final check-out and it was transformed. The grass is now well-grown meadow, full of orchids and geraniums and rich in other species too – high enough to be hard to see over, let alone run through. The woodlands are thick and dense – feeling far wilder than I would have believed possible. It looks a much better area than I would have believed.

Best of all was the weather. It was a perfect June evening: warm but with fresh air. The park was full of happy children (and a few disaffected youths), there were literally hundreds of rabbits on the grass and I saw a Kestrel and several woodpeckers. Lovely.

I have been using an Olympus C-3020z digital camera for years. Over the last eight or nine months it has been developing a problem where horizontal black lines would show across images and it would take a long time between pressing the button and taking a photo. Both these were due to problems with the connection to the rather flimsy memory cards. In the last month or two, this became even more severe and I had to keep taking the card in and out to get it to work at all. I also noticed a tendency for the images to have a magenta colour cast. Finally, it became too unreliable and irritating to use.

I took the plunge and bought a Nikon CP 5700 - I would have liked the Nikon D70 DSLR but simply cannot afford it – or the several lenses, flash gun, filters etc. I would feel obliged to buy to go with it. Internet research and talking to a few people suggested the 5700. It is being superceded so might be affordable if I shopped around. It has a fantastic lens, which does 35 – 280mm and you can add supplementary lenses to go even wider or longer. It has an electronic viewfinder, so like an SLR you do see what the lens sees. (The separate viewfinder on the Olympus was always a problem I found) It can do everything – with every kind of focus and exposure you can imagine. Most importantly, I looked at lots of sample images and for the sorts of photography I do its images were the most impressive in its price class.

I found one in Jessops in Milton Keynes, played for ten minutes, helped by a genuinely knowledgeable assistant, who showed me the new (better but more costly) version and confirmed that these were on their way out. I decided that the price had dropped a great deal (only 30% of when the camera was newly on the market!) and was not likely to drop much more and after an agonising moment of financial decision making, I took the plunge.

I have not done much yet except to find my way around it, but I love it. It feels professional and takes stunningly high quality shots. The viewfinder has all the information I need and the camera seems to be intuitive to use (something I have often heard said about Nikons). Most of all, it makes me want to take photos. I have posted a few of my first shots in the gallery - these are hugely reduced in size, but give a hint of the quality of the images this camera produces.