Congratulations to all the new Northern Champions and I hope that everyone enjoyed their day out at Arncliffe. Certainly all those I spoke to after the finish were enthusiastic about their courses and the organisation generally.

Planning good courses in Arncliffe is challenging and I appreciated Alastair's philosophy to avoid track running as far as possible and also to get everyone, other than the youngest juniors, out on to the moor.  Inevitably this meant a substantial amount of climbing in tough forest in the early part of the courses, but the reward was some good legs across the moor, which was probably just about at its best.  Of course, the excellent weather helped.  Winning times were a little faster than I expected, but there was quite a wide spread of times and it was better to err on the side of caution in view of the time of year.

There were very few retirals or mispunches.  The majority of disqualifications were due to failure to punch at control 124, the gate on to the moor.  I know how infuriating this can be having done it myself once, but the rules make it very clear that there is no discretion to reinstate unless it can be shown that the control box has failed and this was, after all, a championship event.

The event was organised over a fairly short time scale and I was lucky to be working with a very competent planning and organising team.  My thanks go to all of them.

David Brook
Controller