Chris Curtis Web Site

Although it was a grey day threatening rain, Coates Common in W Sussex is a beautiful place to visit. It is sandy heathland with rolling hills, backed by the South Downs. There are lots of pine trees, and broad leaves, in small patches of woodland connected by swathes of heathland. The common has herds of semi-wild horses too – making it look and feel very like the New Forest. It is quite a long way from anywhere with the last few miles being along small lanes, but worth the effort.

I had a very mixed run. I was fourth at control two and 19th at control 3! I came out of control 2 at 90 degrees to the right of where I should have been and by the time I realised I had run downslope quite a way and had to struggle uphill and through nasty brambles to get back on track. I also obeyed the instruction to cross at the mandatory crossing on the way to 3 and was passed by a few people I did not know who cut across on a more direct route.

Things were reasonable for a while after that as the course went through woodland behind some open fields – at one point taking us into a very “black and white” birch forest – before heading back onto the common itself. I made a couple of one or two minute errors – e.g. going to 10 and having to run to 9 and back again from there but things were reasonable until the last control. This involved a straight run across the main open area in the common – about 500 metres: downhill at first and then gently up again. From the beginning of this open area I could see a control I had visited earlier which was close to the one I needed and made the dangerous assumption that I knew where the last control had to be. First the open area turned out to be covered in 20cm high bramble. I would have been better going round on the paths. Then I could not find the control. The ground did not make sense with the map. I had to relocate several times and finally found the control without quite “nailing” it. A six or seven minute error that cost me about 7 places so I finished in 54 minutes and 22nd. Oh well.

I was thinking on the way home. A year ago I was struggling to finish green courses under an hour. Now I am bitterly disappointed if I take longer than 50 minutes, as I did today. I feel like I should be round in 40 minutes or less, and I can see where I am losing the time – which makes it more frustrating but I suppose I ought to be encouraged: there must come a time when the mistakes do not happen and I can sustain the quality of my best legs through a whole course. One thing is for sure, I need to keep on trying.

I am thinking very hard about buying a new camera sometime soon, while being aware that I am not always using my existing camera as well as I could. Whatever I eventually do about a new camera, the most important thing is to make more images, more often and of better quality.

To motivate me in this quest I have created a photoblog – “Thoughtful Camera” – which is live now. The idea is to make at least one image each week and publish them there. This will be a good discipline – it does not matter if anyone else likes them: though you are welcome to visit. Collections of images will still appear in the gallery from time to time.

The biggest reason for thinking about a new camera is frustration with the present one. My Nikon Coolpix 5700 is a good camera and can make great images, but it is not a SLR. It is slow to focus (and quite easy to fool) and it takes ages and great care to set it manually or semi-automatically to achieve the kind of image I want. By current standards, especially if I want big prints, 5 megapixels is limiting. The battery life is dire, even with the big battery pack and putting images onto the memory card is slow. I am looking in the direction of a Canon 400D, but the price means this is a big commitment and needs a careful decision.

By the way, the photoblog was created with pixelpost with my own template adapted from the default. Very simple and easy to use open source software (if you know anything about php and mysql web sites, that is!)

I am suffering from a classic cold – sore throat, runny nose, aching limbs – so was very unsure about whether to go orienteering. It was dry and reasonably warm, and this was the last chance to do night orienteering this winter, so eventually I set out to Borde Hill to take part in the South-East Night League and do the Olive course (4km and not too technical – broadly equivalent to Green).

Borde Hill is classic southern English park land, with lakes, patches of woodland and wonderful old single trees. The area is quite hilly, so most of the estate is rolling grass slopes. A small crowd gathered and registered soon after sun set, watching a subtle but pretty evening light silhouette the trees and the land disappear into the gloom.

This was my second night event. I had struggled in the first, partly because it was very new to me, but also because the weather was foul and the ground was very difficult: if it was not knee deep mud it was covered in “brashings” (cut wood). I enjoyed this much more.

The first control was down the slope, round the end of a lake and following a large earth bank. It felt “right” and the map made sense. I made a dubious route choice on the second leg going around to pick up an obvious fence to follow, just missing it somewhere and having to come back. There were a number of long straight runs across open park land, and these went smoothly. I kept going past a sort of “stockade” of fences in the middle of the park – some sort of equestrian jump I guess – very distinctive and visible from a fair distance in my head torch so I felt very secure. I was running faster than I thought I would be able to as well until the last few controls were I made a couple of mistakes and was fading fitness wise.

I was back in 50 minutes – twice as fast per km as my first night event and not very far off daytime speeds. The course was won in half an hour, and I was 13th overall, but I was in touch with some much faster and better orienteers, so overall I feel quite good about it. I even scored a few points for the club in the league (not that SO needed the points, it was already unbeatable before the event). More importantly, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I felt that sense of “flow”: a mixture of concentration and focus which means that you are engrossed in what you are doing and the world seems a long way away.

Maps and routes (including mine) are available online.

I spent an hour or so at the dealer’s today trying to decide on a new car. I think I will stay with Citroen. I like the slight Gallic quirkiness and the embedded technologies and have enjoyed driving my Picasso. The trouble is that Citroen have downgraded the Xsara Picasso range to make room for their new C4 Picasso – which is gorgeous, but bulky and expensive to buy and run – so a straight replacement is not an option. Also, I seem to spend most of my driving life in traffic jams so want to move to something a bit greener and fuel efficient, especially now that I am not transporting lots of teenagers around all the time.

I thought it might be the C4 but we spent some time looking at a C3. If you are going to downsize, you might as well do it properly (though the C1 or C2 would be going too far!). A decision in the next few weeks.

It is very unusual for us Southerners to have controls scattered among rock outcrops! Today’s event at Balcombe Waterside used an area along a steep slope above Ardingley Reservoir, complete with outcrops of Tunbridge Wells sandstone scattered among a mixed forest, that in places looked exactly like the terrain in “Catching Features“.

We parked in a sawmill, so the cars had to tuck themselves in among newly cut oak beams and piles of other timber, then crossed the road to the start and finish area. I made a bit of a hash of the first control. I set off so confidently that I did not believe I had got it right, so hesitated, then decided I was right after all. I made up for it by a straight dash through the forest to control 2, helped by being sucked along some of the way by the wake of Bryony who was passing me at high speed! The third control is in the picture, close to the lake edge in a very complex and technical area which took me a while to negotiate, though I was proud of my navigation in such complex terrain. When I saw the results I could not work out why I had been so slow compared to everyone else until I saw that they had done what I should have: simply avoided the complexities, sprinted straight downhill to the lake edge and run along until they hit the control. D’Oh! A classic example of the technique of simplification (or not!)

Looking at the splits, although it only cost me five or six minutes, this error, and a few one or two minute errors elsewhere, put me out of contention, despite a reasonably smooth run overall.

I loved the terrain. It was open, runnable, with some complex and dramatic contours (I was scrambling up or down hill in several places, trying to reach controls in deep gulleys) and simply very beautiful – with hints of “alpine”, especially where there was richly green grass carpeting beneath the trees. The brightly sunny morning with perfctly clear skies after an overnight frost also helped create a sense of it being a special area, as did the views of the lake, through trees and from the forested or open shorelines. It did not feel like England somehow.

The last 1km was punishing, having gone down slope from the start, I knew we would have to come back up. I did manage to run the last 100m – after beng awfully close to having to crawl a little earlier.

My time was faster again – 48 minutes – but the course was shorter (to take account of the 150m of climb!) so it worked out at only 15 minutes per km: the slowest over the ground for a while. I know I could not have gone any faster – I really thought my heart was going to explode at one point. I was firmly in the middle of the table at 33rd. The turn-out was huge with more than 60 on green alone and not far off 200 participants altogether. Still, a thoroughly enjoyable course and I am glad I took the camera. (By the way, I went back in afterwards – I don’t run with it: I’m slow enough already!)