There, it's out in the open, and I'm starting to feel better already. Last week at Westbury-on-Trym I'd had a good run around the course and had been devastated to learn that I'd missed one of the last controls. So this week I couldn't wait to get going, and to finish the course properly, with every control found and all in the correct order.
So what was I thinking of? I set off toward the first control, but for some inexplicable reason, turned right instead of left and headed south on the road to Wells. It was so stupid! I know that part of Cheddar and have no idea what was going on in my head. Of course at the time, I was convinced I was in the right place, looking for that first control.
Eventually I decided I had to go back to the start and try again. I didn't actually get that far but got to the junction where I'd gone wrong, and the scales fell from my eyes and I found the control. Unfortunately it had taken me almost 15 minutes. 24 hours later I took another look at the map, wanting to figure out where I'd gone wrong and only then did I realise that the bridge I'd crossed was out of bounds.
What a great start! I'd wanted to make amends for missing a control and ended up taking a right instead of a left. I was still beating myself up about this when I went straight past the side road that would lead to the second control. More minutes added to my time, and then, once I'd found that one, the inquest in my head was still raging when I decided that the 3rd control was in a churchyard, when of course it was in the side road alongside it. More wasted time on the clock.
Even I couldn't miss the 4th control, and fortunately there was a reasonably long stretch to the number 5 and this gave me time to pull myself together. I knew I'd been guilty of careless map reading and navigation and I wasn't going to get anywhere carrying on like that.
Number 5 made me smile. It was in a garden (so needless to say, I didn't find it immediately as I hadn't realised this was a possibility). But the sign in the garden that read "Orienteers welcome" was a nice touch and helped take my mind off my poor performance up to then.
The rest of the course wasn't so tricky, because I was reading the map properly, and I was concentrating on what I was doing, as I should have from the first step. There was a bunch of 8 or so controls around the school where we'd started and would finish. They were a bit close together on the map and I had to do some ducking and diving to find some of them but that's more to do with failing eyesight than not reading the map very well and perhaps I need one of those fancy magnifying glasses to stick on my thumb?
Conclusion? I was so disappointed with my start, and the time I took to get round, but pleased to have sorted myself out and rebuilt some confidence on the way. I can and will do better, and I can't wait for the next event, to prove it. And, no doubt, to make other new mistakes, and probably repeat some older ones!
I know I'm not the first to make these mistakes, nor will I be the last, and I expect I'll make them again, just hopefully not all at once. I don't intend to blog about every event by the way, that would be another mistake, I just needed to get this one off my chest.
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