Thanks Laurence,

Tracked your route and it makes more sense having now done the event, I think I might go solo from now on considring the faff factor will multiple riders in  a team.

 Really enjoyed the weekend and will practice route planning for the Autumn event.

    thanks for that vote of confidence Peter, I used the same theory at the spring polaris and made a complete balls up so I guess there's a little bit of good fortune needed as well.

    Solo's good but so are twosomes, get a partner of similar abilities and support each other with map reading and decision making

    Other things, get a handlebar mounted map holder and a compass on a short wrist strap, you need to know where you are at all times and if the maps folded away you may as well not carry it. The 1:50000 scale means doesn't show field boundaries etc so it's important to use what information is there. The compass is pretty well essential in poor vis and helps with general direction setting from each check point.

    Don't follow leaders (thanks B Dylan) never assume that others are any less lost than you, just because they're haring away doesn't mean that they know where they are, always try to rely on your own map reading skill. But it also pays to keep your eyes on other riders as you approach c/p's  for quick clues to exact locations

    I got to the hand out point for c/p scores and realised that nobody had the description sheet and as you know you're stuffed without one, so I went back to the start and collected a pile to give to the guy at the score hand out (the starter told me it was a drop off on their part)

    I've done the last three as a solo, but am doing the autumn as a twosome, see you there? 

I agree with most of what Laurence says apart from the fact that I never normaly use my compass when out on my bike.   I guess I do have a good sence of direction though.  The only time I would realy contemplate using it would be if I managed to realy get lost but when your following paths thats actualy fairly hard and my first point for recovery is the countours because they tend to be right whereas the paths may be wrong on the map. 

Doing it solo I put the descriptions in a plastic bag tied with string around my neck and then put it down the front of my shirt most of the time but it means I can readily get at the descriptions without having to stop.

 Ifor