Kerno ‘Fun’ Event, Tehidy Woods, Sunday 19 August 2001 The key to a good ‘fun’ event is making the rules interesting, complex and yet clever enough to balance different peoples abilities whilst at the same time retaining the sense of fun. For the Kerno event at Tehidy Woods Arthur Boyt managed to do this very successfully. The event was spit into three stages. The first part was a forest quiz in which we had to identify various natural objects including tree leaves, cones, butterflies and owl pellets. This had most people scratching their heads and guessing. The second part included a small Trail-O course consisting of three points where in Trail-O fashion competitors had to gaze across and use their skill and judgement (or guess) to say which of the four flags was actually on the control feature. The last of these was timed against the clock. The final part of the event was a timed score event where for the ‘long’ competitors had 60 minutes to collect controls. The first, second and third placed in the Trail-O had an extra 15, 10 and 5 minutes immunity from time penalties respectively. Competitors were given one map to begin with but if they managed to collect all the controls on this, could return to the start for a second map with more controls – that is unless they found the ‘special’ control with extra instructions that would give you an advantage. Arthur at this point announced that he’d been rather disappointed recently to see Orienteers running to the centre of the control circle without actually reading or using the control description, so the features to the controls above 29, although shown in the control circle, would not actually be in the centre of the circle. This meant that we’d all be actually reading the bits that said S earthwall juction, S side and taking note of it – an excellent training idea! After explaining the rules to the score – which Roger Hargreaves likened to a game of Mornington Crescent (left rules, no jumping and no diagonals!) – we were off into the woods. Some went to the East and the rest to the South. Hoping to gain an advantage I decided that as I am not a fast enough runner to get all controls in the hour I would start by going east for some then change and go south in the hope that this might increase my chances of coming across the ‘special’ control with the extra instructions. Remarkably this actually worked and after coming south I happened across the control with a cryptic clue attached. The clue referred to a rocky pit to the north east of my present location, with an unmarked control. After fighting through the brashings to this control there were more instructions – go back to the start and pick up the second map for more controls. Time began to run out and I managed to use my 5 minutes immunity gained from coming third at the Trail-O to bag an extra 48 points at a distinctive tree before finishing just before time ran out. When all had returned Arthur went through the answers to the quiz. For orienteers that spend a lot of our time in the countryside we did rather poorly. Perhaps we are too busy looking at our maps to really look at our surroundings? The event was very educational though and a lot of fun – thanks Arthur. James Head Devon Orienteering Club