This morning we headed up to Kaapsehoop for a non-competitive, novelty event - a metrogaine around the village of Kaapsehoop. Chatting with friends, we thought it should be a 'Villagegaine' as the town is so quaint and tiny. With so many interesting houses and guesthouses, it's a wonderful metrogaine clue environment. Organised by Stephanie Mulder, it was a wonderful and fun 'off-day' event.
My group paired up today and I ran with Ephraim. He handled the navigation while I kept an eye on the clues and writing down the answers. We had a one-hour time limit and we whizzed around the town to complete the route, collecting all of the controls, in around 38 minutes. We were in second or third place.
One of our other pairs also got all of the controls (Tebatso and Lesedi) - making it with minutes to spare. Diketso and Tseke seem to have fought over the map - returning a bit over time. I'm not quite sure of what went down here - Diketso started laughing when we asked.
Mary and Juliet did really well, working their way through the town. They were way over time when we found them quite happily still locating controls. Mary says she thought the one hour time limit meant minimum time. If I'd left them out there I have no doubt they would have quite merrily gone to all their remaining the controls. They're both so in the groove.
With Mary and Juliet back we did a short coaching session with a compass. We started with orientating the map using the compass and then working on direction of travel - how to determine in which direction where you want to go is from where you are. That seems to have gone down well. Mary has been asking me for two days to show her how to use a compass. She's getting the features really well so now was definitely a good time for this session.
It's a beautiful day here so most of my charges are in the swimming pool. Later this evening I look forward to doing a pacing session with them on the street outside our hostel and I think it may be time for my control description flash cards tonight.
We've got a middle-distance forest event tomorrow. Lesedi has been upgraded to Open Medium course (from short). He's champing at the bit after winning the short course yesterday. Tebatso is very confident of a good session too. Nice for Tebatso to have a rival tomorrow.
I made a deal with young Tseke (he's Mary's son) last night... I gave him R5 to play pool on condition that he punches all of his controls tomorrow. Yesterday he got all but two. We looked at his route and how close he must have been to them. We discussed how to problem solve and I am feeling optimistically confident that tomorrow will be his day.
Diketso is aiming for second place tomorrow (and, I think, to beat Mary).
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| In Kaapsehoop today - beautiful blue sky and lovely conditions. The rocks behind us... that's where we were running on Monday. |
1 comment:
Sounds like your having fun. Every time you show photos of those rocks I am jealous. Love Kaapschehoop, especially in the mist. Try to go at least twice a year. If you get a chance, try and have a look around the garden at Lambourne's, my idea of a perfect natural English garden with the rocks as your wall. Lots of foxgloves when I was there last. It's almost always booked but I with your charm I am sure you will be able to ask for a look around if you have not seen it before. ;-)
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