| Date | Event | Parking | Organiser |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6-8 November Any time |
Forest Training Christchurch Permanent Course |
GL16 7NN | Maprun Gloucestershire |
As we are unable to organise formal events in the Forest of Dean at present, we have decided to extend our summer series of informal orienteering training activities, but with the added difference that these courses will only be available to run for a 3 day period. We hope to have new courses available each fortnight, and by limiting their availability, we will encourage people to run them while they can, to look forward to the next ones, and perhaps to engender some informal competition between runners in your age classes. That said, these are NOT formal events; you run at your own risk, free of charge, and in accordance with government rules for gathering and social distancing.
Travel and Parking
Parking is in the smallish car park opposite the entrance to Forest Holidays Christchurch campsite, GL16 7NN. Click on any of the labelled icons on the map, and then the 
symbol, for directions. There is additional limited parking further on down the road towards Bracelands camspite, where te road widens a little. The car park can be quite busy, but there is generally somewhere to park in the car park or on the nearby roads.
There is a cafe at the entrance to the Forest Holidays site, where you could go for your course post mortem. It appears to be open, though there is no signage there giving opening times.
The Area
Unlike the rather flat terrain around Mallards Pike, Highmeadow woods around the Christchurch and Bracelands campsites are steeply riven by valleys running down to the Wye, so you can expect a more physical experience than at New Fancy. Overall, the going is reasonably good, though slippery on the steeper slopes, and there is relatively little undergrowth.
The Map
A4 1:10,000 ISOM map, 5m contours, LIDAR 2018 based. We are using the version of the map created for the Christchurch Permanent Orienteering Course(POC). It is largely up to date, but may not exactly represent vegetation screens. Generally these are not an issue in the event area.
PDF versions of the course maps, and control descriptions, will be published here a couple of days or so before the start of the activity. The courses themselves can be downloaded from the UK/Gloucestershire/Training folder on the maprun server, again a couple of days or so before the activity window.
The Courses
We plan to provide the same three courses at each of these training activities, the details for this one being as follows:
- Orange: 3.6km, 150m climb, 7 controls
- Green: 3.6km, 185m climb, 7 controls
- Blue: 5.8km, 305m climb, 11 controls
Maps and Control descriptions can be downloaded and printed from these links:
Orange Green Blue Control Descriptions
The Start and Finish are co-located on the track into the aerial ropeway area about 100m down the road beyond the car park.
Course Notes
These are GPS courses, using maprun technology, but for this training session we are using the permanent course control sites, so in most cases there is a permanent control post at each control. Some, however, are broken, and are propped against a convenient tree, and two posts are missing. In these cases, for consistency, we have hung a red and white streamer at the control site to confirm that you have found the control, although typically your phone will confirm that before you actually get to where the post should be! The course was fully checked and refurbished less than 2 years ago, so it seems a shame that it has been vandalised so much since.
Although controls are thus marked on the ground, the punch tolerance for all courses will be set at 25m, as before. This means that your phone or watch should register te control about the time you would expect to see a control flag if there was one there.
Maprun has various facilities which you can choose to use if you are inexperienced orienteer, or you would like some form of backup on a course with no physical controls to confirm that you have visited the controls.
- The courses are set up to allow you optionally to display your current location and track, should you wish to do so. To use this facility, you simply enable these options by tapping Options and Setting before tapping Go to Start. Note that you cannot enable them once you have tapped Go to Start. You may find this useful as a novice. If more experienced, these options can also be useful in the event that you think you are in the right place, but the phone hasn’t beeped to confirm. You carry your phone hidden away, so not using the location to aid your navigation, but if lost, or if you are sure you are in the right place, you can get your phone out and have a look at where it thinks you are.
- maprun has a facility called HITMO – Hey I Think I Missed One – which you can use post run to add to your result any controls which you believe you visited, but the phone did not record. One of the limitations of GPS and phone technology is that sometimes the phone location will be lagging behind your actual position, and the accuracy of the GPS location is affected by things like tree cover and deep valleys etc. HITMO will check your track against the control locations and will allow you to add ‘punches’ for controls it thinks you visited, but which did not register. You access it from the results screen on your phone, using the menu icon on the top right corner of the screen. So, if you are fast and confident in your navigation, and are sure you are in the right place for a control, there should be no need to loiter waiting for the phone to catch up and beep and tell you so…..you can keep going, and review your track with HITMO after the Finish.
Technology
You will use the maprunF or maprunG app to record your time and punches. If you have not used maprun before, you need to download the app from the relevant app store before you travel to the event. You should also verify that the app is correctly installed on your phone, has the necessary permissions to use the location and storage services, and ideally has been tested by means of a simple local test at home. You can find plenty of information on how to set up and test your phone on the Getting Started page of the Maprun Gloucestershire website.
You should also download the event to your phone before travelling. Whilst the app does not need a phone signal to work, it does clearly need one to download the course, and there is a strong chance that there wont be one in the forest. Note that this is particularly important for maprunG users; maprunG does require a phone signal to download the course to your watch, and to upload it back to your phone afterwards. In that case you may have to wait until you have a signal before uploading.
Timings
These courses will be available to download and run only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the 6-8th November. After that time they will probably be taken down from the maprun server, but may be re-published at some future date. You can run them at any time during that period. They are free of charge.
Safety
The courses cross no roads, and are suitable for younger runners if suitably experienced, or accompanied.
You run entirely at your own risk. Bear in mind that you are likely to be off-path for significant parts of the courses, and although this is a fairly populous part of the forest, you could be out of sight of paths and passers by if you were to fall. You are strongly advised, if running alone, to let someone know where you are going, when you will be back, and make arrangements to tell them that you are indeed back safely.
You are likely to encounter walkers and cyclists in the area, and should take appropriate measures to maintain social distances.
Queries
If you have comments or queries on the courses or technology, please email maprun@ngoc.org.uk