Haglofs Open5 adventure race - Church Stretton
Haglofs Open5 adventure race
David Johnson / 11.11.2011
Competitors from as far north as Callandar (Scotland) and as far south as Truro (Cornwall) descended on registration at Church Stretton School on a stunningly clear and sunny day. It was shaping up to be one of those classic events where the weather and event area click nicely into place.
The school hall was soon noisy with excitement of what Open Adventure had got in store for this one. Anyone with local knowledge or who'd looked at the maps of the area could see that this place was surrounded by hills. It is of course the home of the Long Mynd, with it's legendary 50 miles in 24 hours challenge hike.
But today all that competitors had to do was locate up to 30 controls spread out along the length of 'the Mynd' in the 5 hours available. As soon as competitors broke open their race packs, they could see that virtually all of the controls were located on the Long Mynd which was north west of registration.
The run controls were scattered around the hills and valleys from Jonathan's Hollow in the north to Long Synalds in the south. For navigational challenges they were located on or near to footpaths as well as in open access areas. But all the footpaths running north west on the Long Mynd are all very committing running from the valley floor to the hill tops. There are shortcuts between the valleys, but shortcutting means either finding run-friendly sheeptrails or heather bashing to cross from one valley to another. This one would certainly favour the orienteers who are not afraid to break out the compass and leave the footpaths behind.
There was an obvious footpath loop taking in the higher scoring controls firstly heading south to the 'Bunker Gate' control at the foot of a reservoir and then heading west along Townbrook Valley below the spookily named Devil's Mouth! To complete the high scoring loop runners climbed via a couple more controls almost to the high point of Pole Bank at 510 mtrs, before heading north east along the Roman road to Shooting Box, before descending the path beside the stream to the control at the 5m high waterfall at the head of Lightspout Hollow. A simple run back down the Mott Road via a couple more controls before arriving back at the transition netted around 65% of the total run score which was a maximum of 250 points.
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