As our Chairman, Jolyon, is very busy at the moment I thought I’d write a short chat to fill in for him.

The weekend just gone was quite a busy one for some. On Saturday, 7 of us had a Surveying Day at Holmsley Inclosure where we practised and demonstrated our various surveying tecniques – including using GPS devices –  as well as having some really interesting discussions about how you classify the runnability of areas and what does/doesn’t constitute a mappable knoll/root stock/distinctive tree! When you’ve tried to do surveying for an O-map you will soon realise how much of a subjective skill/art it is and if you asked 5 surveyors to produce a map of the same area you’d end up with 5 different versions! I personally learned a lot that day and will endeavour to improve my mapping skills next time I go out.

On Sunday, we held the first of the South West Summer Relay Series – the Hardy Relays (although we were asked not to call it a relay event as, technically, BOF haven’t yet allowed relays to be held under the Covid guidelines – so it was called the Hardy Team Score event!) After a slow start in terms of entries, we ended up with 9 Senior/Vets and 1 Junior teams, plus about 5 individual competitors. We were based in Broadstone Recreation Ground where 20 of the 25 controls were sited, the others being in the nearby urban streets.The format was a Harris Relay whereby there is a ‘spine’ of (in this case, 5) controls which all members of the team of 3 must visit, with the remaining controls being shared out between the team. You then all set off at the same time. This format suits me well as, when I am running with the likes of Gavin Clegg and Rob Hick, I am usually tasked with collecting the spine controls and maybe a few others, while they do all the running for the others! This worked well yesterday and as a result we came in 1st! 

Wessex Wizards – the ‘magic’ winning team!

This doesn’t mean we were the fastest, however, as there is an age-handicap system applied. The fastest team was the Wessex Raiders, consisting of James, Roger and Jason. We also had the Wessex Wonder Women – Tracy, Tina and Lauren – who did well too. Here’s a photo of them sorting out who’s doing which controls.

The next relay in the series is Sarum’s on July 11th at The Moot, Salisbury. If you would like to be in a team, and haven’t already let Roger know, please do so. 

Entries are also still open for WIM’s event on Stonebarrow and Golden Cap on Sunday June 27th.