I hope everyone enjoyed today’s event – here are the provisional results.

Penalty times highlighted (red); riders who don’t appear on MapRun and have a shared score with another rider (yellow) and the two riders with manual scores (blue). The times are all from MapRun.

Let me know if my maths is wrong for any penalties, or if you have checked your course and a control is missing (some riders had a issue with #4 and #8)

PDF – 20220212-Wheldrake Provisional results

You can have a look at everyone’s results and the course they took on MapRun here:

Maprun link here to full table and tracks

By Saturday morning the bright blue sky of the previous day had been replaced by more blustery weather which meant everyone had a headwind at some point. However, the rain (mostly) held off and the tracks were mostly in a decent condition.

Reports at the end from the 44 riders who took part were generally very positive and it was good to see a couple of riders who hadn’t taken part for a couple of years.

I enjoyed planning the course, and was able to make the most of the good weather in January to ride everything, remove the bits that weren’t good and decide upon the course size. It’s quite hard to develop a course that is challenging enough for the fastest riders, but offers something for all abilities. Whilst there were some “small circuits”, I think there were lots of options available.

Of the 30 available controls, it was brilliant to see that Nuno Cerqueira made it to 28, and Chris Hollingbery got to 26 – which suggests it was about right. A total of 7 riders had scores above 400, and 15 riders over 300 and it is fascinating to see the different routes that everyone chose.

Thank yous:

The track through Wheldrake Wood only works with the additional permission from Swallow Hall Golf Course to use the track from the road to the wood. Grateful that they allowed access once again, and if you know any golfers please do encourage them to visit the course – its a small family run business and it is good of them to allow us permission.

Most riders went into the Escrick Estate at some point, and they also provided permission to use the tracks between #27 and #2. We’ll be making a donation from the event to The Woodmeadow Trust in return for the Estate allowing us to use the tracks today.

Lisa and team at The Wenlock Arms did a great job today – I think everyone got their food on time and it was good of them to allow us to host the event there.

The Girl Guide’s White Rose Hall  was the location of the additional parking and the start. I know parking wasn’t that easy – although the hall car park wasn’t full!

Thank you to Steve Willis for running the start for me – it’s a chilly job on day’s like today; and Tim Evans for the advice, mapping and MapRun advice!

MapRun and the course map,,

I think MapRun worked well today. 3 riders couldn’t make it work and the were a couple of control issues but overall it worked well.

Tim and I debated using a 1:50 scale map, or a 1:25 definition reduced to 1:40. We opted for the latter as the extra detail should have made for easier navigation. Tim highlighted the bridleways and I tried to place controls to make the routes easier to navigate.

At control #7 there is only one bridleway heading towards control #22 (but I can see that the drainage ditch looks a bit like a track running NNE). It might also have helped to mark the permissive tracks a different colour (Swallow Hall, Escrick)

Control #26 (on a brighter day!)