Many thanks to all of you who took part in the Last of The Winter Wanderland Series in Wentwood on Sunday.

The plan was to try to find a central event centre to enable maximum route choice within the wooded areas. Despite enquiries to various halls, the Wentwood timber centre and a small chapel none were suitable. Either no kitchen, no toilets, no parking or simply too small, so back to Earlswood hall with a big car park all necessary facilities. Just as well as with some 50 entries as suitable parking area was very important.

Unfortunately during the final recce the full extent of some recent and ongoing forestry works meant that last minute control changes were necessary making the course a little unbalanced and slightly shorter than I had planned, however some of the under tyre conditions (a bit muddy) were slow so I decided to stick with 1 less control. I estimated the new route to link all the controls could be circa 29 km and 1000m of climb, a control about every 5 minutes, a good challenge but likely achievable by those with serious legs and lungs.

(I’ve not yet looked at Strava to see if my guess was accurate or not)

I hoped that once in the woods controls would generally come thick and fast and looking at the splits indeed there were lots of short, sharp legs of under 5 minutes. (The average number of controls was about 15 per person, roughly 1 every 8 minutes. Given the climb back to the finish was a bit steep from the south end of the woods getting timing right was quite tricky.

The top 3 riders all took different routes. Ifor Powell was very impressive in clearing the course (425) with a few minutes to spare with James Brown in second place on 415. Nick Dallimore was third with 405. Top female was Nicky Griffin with another solid ride scoring 313.

It was great to see a number of new riders too, especially a couple of locals who have expressed interest in future events despite a bit of a baptism of fire for Rob Morgan. Getting the timing right is a tough task!
My thanks to my mate Glyn Badham who oversaw the starts (and may be tempted to have a ride at future events), Amanda and Verda for catering, Siôn for IT help.

One big bonus was help in getting controls collected back in making the end of the weekend a pleasure rather than a chore. Thanks to Ifor, John, Siôn, Jon and Nicky. I only collected 4 controls so had time to go for an extended ride just for the fun of it before the sun finally set on a full weekend.

Thanks for all your donations-The Woodland Trust will benefit by £82.70

Ian