Look Before You Leap
Fermanagh Orienteers certainly pulled off an excellent double event day for the NI Score and Night Champs at Todds Leap on Saturday 25 Feb 2023. A brand new map, two adjacent but contrasting areas with no overlap of terrain, indoor facilites for the prizegiving along with catering, a dry day and a venue handy for those travelling from the east and north-west. What more could you ask for? Well muddy paths, an emu, rhinos, giraffes, snakes in the grass and even a pterodactyl!
Planner and Organisers Fin and Teresa Finlay write:
This day of 3 sequenced events is a considerable undertaking for any club particularly at this time of year. The need to identify 3 suitable venues reasonably close to one-another is a challenge. We were fortunate in late autumn when a new club member Declan Faulkner mentioned he lived beside a big forest not far from Ballygawley. Looking it up on Goggle maps with us he mentioned it was next to Todd’s Leap Activity Centre. He was very friendly with the owner. Ah hah! Teresa and I decided it was worth a look. Declan was tasked with floating the idea with the owner Benny and giving us an introduction. Sometime later we called in to check out the forest with Declan and meet Benny. It looked an ideal venue. Now all we had to do was get the Club to agree and find someone to map it! We had two and half months! Dave Peel is a fast mapper and does a good job for a reasonable price. He said he could fit in a week in late January. This was going to be tight. Florencecourt became a fall-back option.
Obviously it worked and as Planner I had a map by the end of January and Robbie Bryson our controller had time to check the sites and cause us to add more controls and shorten the time to make it a real challenge to visit all the controls. Fortunately, Graham Nielsen was coming over in mid-February to NI to control the British Sprints in Armagh and conduct a Controller’s course. This gave us the excuse to put the event back a week! However, the knock-on of that was holiday and family commitments for a bunch of our experienced volunteers including the Controller! It also clashed with many of our best Juniors going to a training/selection event in Dublin.
In the week leading up to the event there was a serious hiccup to preparations. The Maps delivery was delayed by a day and a half! That meant putting out controls on the Thursday and hoping they wouldn’t be interfered with and an anxious wait until Friday afternoon to get our hands on the maps.
On the day everything went nearly perfectly (except of course for Harry Bell’s wrist injury!) Philip McGoldrick was able to turn-up until early afternoon and help start-up the controls in the morning, and collect some controls before having to get back home. Pauric Quinn could get there early enough to manage the tight parking and Declan could help organise the prizegiving set-up in the Centre. The weather was superb; the controls were untouched; no-one managed to get all the controls! The facilities in the Centre were excellent; not only for the prizegiving but also for the waiting around interval (food and Rugby!) until it was dark enough to start the Nights. They went well too, across the ‘unique terrain’ of the Centre property. Some folk were even able to get some hot food from the Centre kitchen before heading home. Teresa and I were able to get back to our B&B in Ballygawley in time for booked Dinner!
A beautiful morning on Sunday enabled Declan, Billy Fyffe, Teresa and I to collect in the final controls and give our thanks to Benny and his team for their hospitality.
SO, WE THOUGHT IT WAS BRILLIANT, BUT WHAT DID YOU THINK? – Please take a minute or two to fill in this FEEDBACK FORM.
The results are at Results>2023 Results.
If you were not present to collect your prize, please contact Ann Savage to make an arrangement to bring your trophy to an appropriate event. You can check if you are a trophy winner at Results > Trophy Winners.