Joydens Wood 18^th December 2005

Organiser’s Comments

I must confess I have a soft spot for Joydens Wood. It's the nearest patch of proper countryside to my home in industrial, treeless Dartford. It's always a pleasure to go there for a run on a summers evening. Perhaps the rose tinted glasses might explain why I described the terrain as "runnable" chalk woodland in the final details. This is perhaps stretching the definition for the more brambly blocks of wood - unless you're a strong runner. Thanks to Jack for planning courses that used the best features of the wood. Thanks also to the Woodland Trust for being so helpful before the event, and for keeping the wood safe from development, and to the DFOK members who helped make the event run smoothly.

Thanks to Phil Basford for suggesting Birchwood Park as an event centre - this was a bit of a find. It was nice to see orienteers relaxing in the bar after the event. Birchwood Park are happy for us to use their facilities again, so hopefully this will become a regular feature of events at Joydens Wood.

Our next event is a local event at Beacon Wood near Bluewater on Saturday 14th January. Only the middle bit of the wood will be understood by everyone as "runnable", but it's an old quarry so has some complex contours to tax your brain as you're stooping under the young trees.

Lost: SI-Card number 247947, somewhere between the finish and the car park.
Found: 1 small, black bobble hat

Sean Cronin

Planner’s Comments

Joyden’s wood is an interesting piece of land; it has a reasonable number of contours, and a good supply of “holes in the ground”, including an Anglo-Saxon ditch and embankment. Unfortunately, it has a lot of brambles, but the courses were designed to avoid the worst of them. The hardest courses to plan were the Yellow and Orange, and apologies for the error in the control description list.

The west of Joyden’s wood is used by horses and I hope the signs that were put out to tell the horse riders to beware runners resulted in the riders treating orienteers with courtesy.

Several people mentioned that 119 Pit which was visited by the longer courses had an unmapped re-entrant near it. Sorry, it was not noticed when planning.

Thanks to Andrew Evans for helping me with the SI equipment, to Dave Stuttard, the controller for tweaking my courses, and to Sean Cronin, the Organiser for always being willing to help, both before the event and on the day from his registration “HQ” at the golf club.

Finally, we put out the controls at dawn on Sunday when it was minus 5 degrees but the wood looked beautiful in the morning sunshine. I hope all of you enjoyed your run in the sunshine.

Jack Richmond