Control 102 - Cong Burn 15/01/06 - Dave Caudwell

The event was armchair planned in mid December, and the pit chosen for the courses was 50m N of the one marked on your maps.
I then spent over a fortnight with my daughter and family over Christmas/New Year in London. I returned to the NE about 10 days
before the event with a very heavy cold, which by now had turned into a lung infection for which I was taking antibiotics.
Before going to London, I had had a medical check-up which included a number of blood tests, the results of which I was to get
on my return. On visiting the doctor, he informed me that I probably had diabetes, high cholesterol levels, and other already
known problems associated with the ageing process, and that more tests were going to be needed. This was rather worrying,
and further tests were done a few days before the event.

On the Saturday and Sunday the week before the event, I went onto the area to check the control sites, and make some up-dates to the map.
During the course of this, I noticed that the field just S of 183 W re-entrant shallow appeared not to have any crops in it, so I went
to the farmer to see if we could run across it. He OKed this, so when I got home, I made various amendments to the map, including removing
the out of bounds from the field, and drawing the connection line from 178 to 183 (same leg on both Blue and Green) directly across the field.
The line had previously been diverted to the N to go round the field when I thought it would be out of bounds. However, on doing this, I noticed
that the new line from 178 to 183 went rather close to 102, which was to be visited later in each course, so the opportunity existed to take
this control out of order to some advantage.

I therefore decided to move control 102 further S to reduce the temptation to take it out of order, and chose the pit circled on your maps.
I was fully aware in doing this that there might not be a pit there any more, as I�d had no reason to check this area since the first edition
of the map in the mid 1980�s. During the miner�s strike later in that decade, men descended on the area to dig coal out of seams that outcropped
at the surface on the river bank near here and spread the spoil around, thus altering some of the ground features. So I knew I needed to visit
the site again to check that it was OK.

However, for whatever reason, I then completely forgot all about this development, and never visited it. When I went to put the control out
on Saturday afternoon, I went to the original pit and put the control in it, still totally unaware of the change I�d made, and without looking
at my map, which clearly showed the circle round a different pit.

So what are we to make of this? Clearly, my ill health coupled with the prospect of the possibility of having to make far-reaching lifestyle changes
if the diabetes diagnosis was confirmed may have been enough to stop my mind working correctly. Or maybe the ageing process memory losses
have caught up with me. Whatever, I�m horrified at my errors in this event.

To end on a slightly more optimistic note, the later diabetes test has turned out to be negative, and the cholesterol, although high, is not high enough
for the doctor to recommend that we do anything about it (yet!).



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