Highleigh Planner's report.

The problems started with the fantastic weekend weather report and the decision made to go fishing on the Saturday. It was a slow days fishing, but a good feed was obtained and a great day on the water. However, I paid for this by having to put out all the controls myself as my controller was not available on the Friday. It turned out that leaving the controls out all day Saturday was not the best decision ever made because young cows and steers find the flags very attractive and nice things to push over and trample into the ground. The SI boxes survived, but it did mean the Yulia and Joy had trouble finding them, especially as they were doing the memory course. They found number 5, eventually, only to find the cows obviously like to eat plastic bags and bits of paper so they could not work out where to go. They came back, fortunately this was not far out of the way for the leg from 5 to 6, but it did take a bit of time out. Things went well until they got to number 9 where the same thing had happened. Control 9 was at the futherest possible point from the start finish line. It was hot by now, pushing 30 °C with stunning views down to Kapiti Island and up to Mount Ruapehu. They decided to leave the control there and come back for a DNF. Sorry about that girls, but it did enable me to give the appropriate bits of map to the other starters.

The feed back from the memory map people was the first 2 controls were most difficult as you had to go back to basics to get the route right and after that everyone seems to have enjoyed the challenge of running without a map.

The ground underfoot was very rough due to pugging caused by cattle on wet grounds at earlier times now dried out to rock hard ridges hiding holes to swallow feet and roll ankles. Ice was available, but having it there obviously meant no one needed it.

It was great to see so many relatively new faces and to have two families either join up or agreeing to join up. Welcome to the Quelsh family who joined on the day.

It appears that apart from the cattle there were no other mistakes apart from a slight miss mapping of a new earth bank by about 50 m. The cattle did provide some entertainment for some people travelling through their paddocks as some were very inquisitive and liked to follow after people, although the heat did kerb their enthusiasm for chasing after people so there were no real problems. Many thanks for those who stayed to help collect the controls. It was much appreciated.

Tony Paterson & George Davies