Janet Cronk has kindly invited us to hold a Club Barbecue based at
her house near Bourn, and has placed a large field of trees at our disposal
as a base for an associated orienteering event. So there is to be a
'Chairman's Challenge' O-event of unusual format, followed by the barbecue,
on the evening of Wednesday 15th July. The event will be signposted from
the minor road between Bourn and Caxton (which is on the A1198 Old North
Road, West of Cambridge), turning South down a very minor road called
Caxton End. It would be helpful if you could let the chairman know (at
ctm1@eng.cam.ac.uk) if you intend to come, so that we can print the right
number of maps and lay in supplies. But please do not feel inhibited from
coming if you have not emailed! There should be plenty of parking space.

The Chairman's Challenge Itself

There will be just one mass start, for teams of three, at
6.45 pm, with maps issued at 6.40 pm. So please arrive in plenty of time to
form teams - each with one junior or veteran at least - and to appreciate
the format. A print-out of these rules will be provided at the event.

There will be only two maps per team, and each member will have
to visit controls on each map. So most of the time one team member will be
sitting out, waiting for a map to be brought back to the Start. Each team
member will have an old-fashioned card, and there will be punches at the
controls - and your map is to be punched also at each control, so it is not
a 'map-memory' event. Total team times should be less than an hour, perhaps
45 minutes for the fastest.

One map is an ordinary O-map of Janet's field at 1:1250. The
other map is an OS map at 1:10,000 of the surrounding area - where we can
only use the roads and the public footpaths (shown by green dashes) all
other areas being out of bounds. There are only three exits from Janet's
field on to the outer mapped area. Juniors are not allowed on or North of
the Bourn-Caxton Road, and the main Old North Road in the SW part of the OS
map is out of bounds to everyone.

All the sixteen controls must be collected by the team - each
member must visit at least three (at least one on each map area), and no
member may collect more than eight. So some planning will be needed - which
is why the maps will be issued early, to allow some discussion time.
Not all the controls will be shown on the maps - at some controls there will be
pieces of map hanging, giving the whereabouts of another control.
The discoverer can either punch that new control or go back to the Start to
send a colleague out to collect it. So some luck and judgment will also be
needed!

The Barbecue

Please bring your own supplies of meat and/or vegetables to be barbecued, and perhaps salads. Cooking facilities, buns, squash and water, ice-cream etc will be supplied centrally.

Entry will be £3 for seniors, £1 for juniors, to go towards the map printing costs and central supplies.

I hope that this will all be good fun, that we shall get good weather, and that many of you will be able to come.

Chris Morley