A league event with the usual range of colour-coded courses, providing options suitable for all ages and abilities.
If you are new to the sport, you may wish to contact us before coming so we can be sure there is someone available to help you get started.
Note: please disregard any set start times you may have seen on Fabian4 – you may start at any time between 10.30-12.30 (allowing yourself time to finish before courses close at 2pm)
Venue and directions: Nesscliffe Country Park
Please park at Nesscliffe Village Hall. Car parking is very limited so please share when possible.
The event will be signed from the A5 at the Nesscliffe South Island; head towards the village and the Village Hall and car park are on your right.
What3Words: turntable.twisting.thunder
Assembly: Assembly will be in the Village Hall along with registration and download.
Toilets: In the Village Hall, no muddy shoes please.
Map: 1:7500 with 5.0m contour intervals, printed on waterproof paper, updated 2024 by Tony Callow.
Terrain: Nesscliffe Country Park has some interesting history which can be explored locally and includes caves in the lower Western edge and recently a Roman fort has been discovered. But for Orienteers we have woodland, dense in places, old sandstone quarry workings, open heathland it also has its hazards the main one being the cliffs on the western edge which are certainly not passable and have been avoided in course planning, please take care if you venture this way. We also have Mountain bikers, horse riders and the usual covering of brambles.
The area has some unmarked Mountain bike tracks and recently some research digs into a past Roman settlement along with being a working forest.
Some long courses will cross over minor roads these will be un-marshalled – please be cautious.
Please be polite and show courtesy to other park users.
Courses: White to Brown will be available as per WMOA League. Course lengths are shown below and any final details will be added as they become available – please check for any late updates before travelling.
| Course | Distance (km) | Climb (m) |
|---|---|---|
| White | 1.7 | 25 |
| Yellow | 2.0 | 50 |
| Orange | 2.4 | 60 |
| Light Green | 3.5 | 70 |
| Short Green | 3.6 | 110 |
| Green | 4.7 | 120 |
| Blue | 6.2 | 170 |
| Brown | 8.7 | 185 |
The Brown course will have a 2-sided map.
Entries: Seniors £10. Juniors £4. Please pre enter via Fabian4. Entries open 29/09/24, and will close at the end of day on Sunday 27th October. There will be limited map availability for entry on the day.
Starts: Starts from 10:30 to 12:30. Courses close at 2pm. The start is a 200m walk along the track from the village hall, routes will be taped
Finish: Will return along the same track to down load in the village Hall. The route will be taped.
Download: This is located in the Village Hall and all competitors must download even if you retire.
Sportident: Electronic punching will be used. Controls will be SiAC enabled but you will need to punch both the start and the finish controls. Dibbers (non-SIAC) available to hire for £1 to seniors, free to juniors. Lost dibbers will be charged at £40.
Safety: Competitors take part at their own risk and are responsible for their own safety.
Full leg protection required and a whistle must be carried, please take care crossing roads.
If you have any medical conditions you wish us to be aware of, please note in a sealed envelope marked with your name and leave at registration and collect when you finish.
Dogs: Dogs welcome. Dogs on course must be on a lead. Please pick up after your dog.
Organiser: Richard Lewis, WRE, wroxell@gmail.com
Planner: Ian Hopkins WRE
Controller: Barry Houghton HOC
Event Flyer in PDF format to view, download or print
Medical information
If you wish any medical information to be available to a practitioner in the event of an emergency, please fill in the British Orienteering medical information form, place it in a sealed envelope with your name on it, and deposit it at Enquiries. It will not be opened unless we have reason to believe you may have suffered a medical emergency and will be shredded after the event if you don’t collect it.
Full results are now available as follows:
- Summary results as PDF to view or download
- Full results with splits as HTML
- British Orienteering results with ranking scores (scores will be assigned overnight)
- RouteGadget
Planner’s Comments
Nesscliffe is difficult to plan on given the restraints of three distinct areas and limitations due to high cliffs.
I concentrated on getting technical difficulty right, but neglected the physical nature of the area. The last two controls on Short Green gave too much climb that could easily have been avoided. Sorry to those who found it difficult. I should have paid more attention to age demographics of the entrants.
Overall I was pleased with the courses. The bracken had died down and the clearance work around the hill fort made running a bit quicker.
Working with Barry as controller was a pleasure. He offered good advice when needed and I learned from my mistakes. He spotted the one control I misplaced which I was able to correct before the start of the event.
Being alone at 7am on the Cliffe with the sun shining and wonderful views made the effort worthwhile.
Thanks to all the WRE team helpers who made the event run smoothly.
I hope Peter Leake (LEI) is OK after what looked like a nasty head injury.
Ian Hopkins, WRE
Controller’s Comments
Firstly my apologies to some of those that ran on the Short Green course. The steepness of a couple of climbs towards the end of the course was much greater than it should have been. It is the course I am normally supposed to run at my age, and I did indeed run up there. It was an oversight on my part in not checking it properly. Again my apologies and I hope it did not detract too much from your enjoyment.
The area itself is not an easy one for a planner as it is split into a number of distinct areas with track running between and lots of the dreaded brambles. It is also difficult to put a good Brown course there without much repetition. I think planner Ian Hopkins did an excellent job and it was a pleasure working with him. He readily took on comments I made and adjusted courses to suit. Thanks also due to Tony Callow for his map updates, when we asked him, sometimes at short notice. Other than Short Green I felt that the other courses complied with the guidelines.
Organiser Richard Lewis obviously has a good team behind him. Thanks to him and all those people behind the scenes that made sure you had a good day out.
Barry Houghton, HOC
Organiser’s Comments
Firstly thank you to all the competitors for turning up and a BIG thank you to the Wrekin Team for helping on the day – we are only a small club but we all work well together.
Organising at Nesscliffe is perhaps made easy by the fact we have an assembly point in the Village Hall, a car park and toilets already in situ. This year I did have a few worries about parking spaces but these were proved unnecessary and the car park team managed to find enough spaces.
The only concern was that on the Thursday before the event they started to harvest some trees, and move more earth in the area by the recently discovered Roman settlement; fortunately the control sites managed to escape work.
The short walk to the start and back from the finish was planned well by Ian Hopkins our planner, who I think we all agree made excellent use of having three areas joined by a track, this along with the steep cliffs on the Western edge.
Also a thank you to Barry Houghton HOC our controller for the day. Barry was a pleasure to work with and gave valuable input when needed.
Richard Lewis, WRE
