CROESO 96

A report on the Welsh Six Day Orienteering Festival by James Head

Unfortunately there were no suitable village halls in the region of Wales that was to
hold this years Welsh Six Day so Peter had managed to obtain two caravans and would be
towing his own up behind the minibus for Devon contingent. On arriving at the camp site
however we found that the bunk bed in Peters caravan had collapsed, so I spent the first night
on the floor of the minibus and the rest of the week camping. At least the bed hadn’t waited
until my brother was asleep on it before collapsing on myself!

DAY 1; GWANAS & TYDDYN DU

Consisting of many intricate contour and rock features this area provided a suitable
challenge for day one. There was a good half hour walk to the start which was mainly up hill,
but offered some exceptional views of southern half of the competition area and the Welsh
hills. After starting I quickly made my way to the first control, then choose to contour around
the hillside to control two where I spotted my brother, Andrew, just coming over the hill on
the more direct route. Moving on to control three both Andrew and myself dropped down too
low as we inadvertently ran into control six, and Andy Reynolds. The next three controls
proved very elusive for everyone being in a particularly complicated area of the map, and
despite already running through it once, control six was also 100 metres further on then I
envisaged. A long slog uphill to control seven enabled Andrew to gain a good lead over me,
and now that he was well out of sight I began to concentrate better on my technique. I made
good use of contouring for the passage along the northern slopes though I was hampered once
I had twisted my left ankle and knocked the bone of my right ankle on the rocks. I finished
the course taking rather longer then normal but felt that I had “woken up” for the rest of the
week. Andrew had of course finished much earlier and took much pleasure in reminding me
of this for the rest of the day! During the afternoon those in the minibus went on a trip to the
Centre for Alternative Technology where we were educated in the benefits of cleaner and
more environmentally friendly power sources and living methods.

DAY 2; CEFNDEUDDWR

The guide book promised completely contrasting orienteering to the previous day,
being mainly within a Forest Enterprise plantation, running along a north-south ridge, with a
couple of small open moorland areas visited by the longer courses. Today saw Andrew
starting six minutes before me which proved to be an advantage for myself as I did not have
to worry about him catching me up! The first two controls were straight forward enough, and
for the third, a knoll located within an area of forest walk, I decided to be clever and attack at
the direction most people would be leaving for control 4. Although I found the control
quickly I did not see any other orienteers! On the way to control four I caught sight of
Andrew through the thick trees, and I could see by the way he was moving that he was
complete oblivious to me as I overtook. There were one or two discrepancies in the mapping
at this point which did create a few moments of confusion in places as I re-read the map to
make certain I was correct. Andrew managed to catch up as I spent twenty minutes looking
for control 8, a crag which proved very elusive for the twenty or so M21/M50’s looking
around. There was a large amount of unmapped rock in the area including two unmapped
walls. I thought at this stage that Andrew had created a large lead so was very surprised when
he popped out of the forest behind me after control fourteen. There followed a rather boring
run along forest road to reach the final two controls. It appeared that this was necessary to get
everyone coming in the same way though the forest roads that had been used for some of the
event car parking. I didn’t manage to beat Andrew to the finish line but had achieved a faster
time. In the evening we went to the event centre where we enjoyed a dinner of Welsh lamb
and entered a team for the quiz, in which we came second by virtue of knowing such arcane
facts as the number of players in a Gaelic football team.

DAY 3; PEN-Y-STRYD TO BWLCH-Y-FFORDD

The weather up to now had been particularly hot, “what we need is a big thunder
storm to clear the air” was one of the comments offered by Dave Livsy who was not to be
disappointed as the heavens opened on Tuesday morning. Running in the middle of a
thunderstorm was a new experience for myself, one which I found I had enjoyed, though this
was when sitting in the dry minibus afterwards! Unlike the previous two days I had found the
course rather “straight forward” and didn’t make enough use of the more technical area in the
south-west part of the map. There was one leg which involved going 400m without any line
features through a technical area in poor visibility. I managed to miss all my attack points but
continued on anyway in the rough direction of the control, relocating by walking into a large
marsh. It had really started to come down now as we ran northwards. The remaining controls
were again not particularly challenging which made the course seem more like a fell race then
an orienteering competition. Arriving back at the campsite we found that the electricity had
been cut off and we were unable to use the showers or the laundry.

REST DAY

Unfortunately the bad weather decided to linger around for awhile - though being
better then the previous day - this meant that any plans to hill walking in Snowdonia were
abandoned. Instead the group spent the morning visiting the Gloddfa Ganol slate mine at
Blaenau Ffestiniog where we were able to journey right into the heart of the Welsh mountains
where it was not surprisingly very cool. In the afternoon we were treated to a tour around the
Hydro-electric power station which was very educational. The mist however descended as we
drove up to the top reservoir, where the final car chase for the Italian Job had been filmed.
Michael Cain had obviously been there on a good day.

DAY 4; CRAIG GARTH BWLCH & PANT-Y-FFYNON

The air was still damp as we arrived at the bottom of the dam holding back the waters
of the idyllic Lake Vyrnwy, this meant a long uphill walk to the assembly area which left
some people in a tired condition before they had even run! The first half of the courses were
spent navigating around the extensive moorland. The height of the bracken and heather did
slow you down in some places but the navigation was straight forward, in fact I could see one
of my controls on a boulder from 100m away, but this had been anticipated by the planner
who had also placed an extra control within the same area. Rosemary had an earlier start time
then the rest of us and so gave us a rough idea of what to expect, this meant I took extra care
when entering the forest. There were a couple of controls where I could have gone off but the
extra care paid off and I was soon back on the tracks for the final four controls. After
finishing I learnt that Andrew had just beaten my time by seven minutes which meant I had
only lost thirty seconds per control.
 DAY 5; HAFREN FOREST

This forest located just a few hundred metres from the source of the River Severn
looked very promising on the Ordnance Survey map and provided a very good assembly and
finish area in a large green meadow located in the middle of the forest, although the car
parking was stretched out along forest roads which meant some very long walks to the start
for most courses. The course was not particularly challenging enough though the forest was
pleasant to run through, involving some steep climbs in places. It was at the start of one of
these climbs that Noel spotted me coming the other way, “you’re not going to get up there!”
he cheerfully commented as I struggled to get up the bank. Meanwhile Andrew had just
jumped down on the path in front of me. I finished the course in a particularly good time, but
this was because of the lack of technical controls rather then any improvement by myself, in
fact I was only thirty seconds from the bronze badge standard.

DAY 6; CROES Y FORWYN TO WAEN LLESTRI

The pressures of organising a week of orienteering were noticeable on the last day
when on driving up to the assembly area we were stopped and told to park along the forest
roads instead of the fields that had been advertised in the event details. It was clear that no
one was prepared for this, which now involved an hour walk to the start, so all start times
were put back an hour. The reason for this, we were told, was due to there being a
particularly large hump in the parking area which some orienteers where experiencing
difficulty driving over. After discussing this it was agreed that those wishing to run would
drive back with Paul and meet up with Peter at his house, but by the time we had sorted this
out the obstruction had apparently been cleared so we all continued to the assembly area.
When we got there we were astounded at the large steep bank we had to drive up. Peter put
the minibus in second gear and literally put his foot down whilst Pauls car nearly came
unstuck at one point. We managed to persuade the controller to let us go off as soon as
possible so that we could arrive back in Devon at a sensible time. It didn’t take long for the
weather to ‘wake me up’, it was pelting down at times. Running across open moor land I was
quickly impressed with myself as I had no major faults all the way round, and every control
was located easily, although it would have been quite easy to make a few mistakes in some
places. One or two controls at the end had elephant tracks leading to them but the rest of the
controls provided a challenging course. I had found I had made an improvement in running
across this type of terrain, particularly when compared to day 1!

In conclusion the Welsh Six day provided some entertaining events, most notably days
one and two, across some very picturesque terrain. So some of the courses were slightly
easier then normal and the maps weren’t quite perfect in places, well that’s life, and
orienteering. At the end of the day we had a very enjoyable time in Wales this year.