We really enjoyed visiting Dalby to check the control sites and then riding the trails again to hang controls Friday evening and Saturday morning. Dalby provides great route choice and excellent tracks for all abilities and it was great to hear people telling me how much they had enjoyed their rides on the finish line, even some who had struggled to find one or two controls.

As we have to do the planning several months in advance of the event in order to get the permissions and maps prepared conditions can change on the tracks. It was March when we went out to the forest to check out potential control sites and my photos of most of the sites looked totally different to what we found on Friday evening. I did try to pick locations where we could get the controls close to the path hoping they would not be too overgrown this clearly didn’t always work out. There were several sites where we had to beat the bracken down on Friday evening to get the sites we had  planned and there were a couple of sites, e.g. 57 where we moved the control across or along the path slightly to avoid the vegetation. Sites 51 and 45 confused a few people, so sorry if you wasted some time or could not find them. If in doubt make sure you read the description for control placements – these two were a little way from the map feature – I thought I had marked them clearly with red and white tape, but maybe it had gone missing.

The last event I planned in Dalby was September 2010. We had about 100 riders at that event and Andy Conn was the only person to get all of the controls, but 4 minutes late back. This time I laid the controls out to make the total distance a bit less for 2015 and so thought possible someone might clear the course. I also put several high scoring controls near the start to give the fitter riders more of a challenge and a more satisfying ride with some high scoring controls for the majority. I hope people liked this. It was a shame we did not have so many riders this year with the clash with the start of the school holidays, but we had some pretty high scores with Graham Tibbot and Tim Evans getting most controls.

Andy & Corinne