I WRITE in response to last week's front page article 'Trampled – 5 years work,' concerning the use of fields on the Lydney Park Estate for orienteering over the Easter weekend, and would like to make the following comments.
Over the Easter weekend nearly 3,500 competitors plus their families, many of whom had not previously visited the area, came to the Forest for an international orienteering festival. Lydney Park Estate land was used extensively for two of the four days of the competition and all negotiations for its use were carried out directly with the Estate. We are very grateful for their help and also for that of Forest Enterprise who were our main hosts on the remaining days. Without it the competitions could not have taken place.
As orienteers, we would not knowingly abuse the hospitality of any landowner or occupier. Unfortunately we did not discover the full implications of Mr Osborne's rigorous approach to organic farming until a very few days before the event, after we were already fully committed to the use of his fields. We did not know that vehicles are normally banned from them until the day after the event took place. Had we been aware of his feelings earlier we would have sought to use another less sensitive part of the estate for the start and finish of our final race.
As a result of a complaint by Mr Osborne, the Estate's representative inspected the field on the day after the race and was of the opinion that no fundamental damage had been done to the root system of the grass. He felt that the surface wear and tear that he had always expected the field to suffer would be restored by spring growth within a maximum period of eight weeks, particularly if assisted by selected rolling.
Mr Osborne had been advised in advance that up to 100 vehicles might be parked on the fields that he occupied. In fact no more than 20 used his fields, the rest being parked on other Estate land. At no time did we try to disguise the scale of the event and he was told that over 2,000 competitors could be expected. We also advised him that we would return the morning after the event to carry out a litter sweep of the field. When we arrived he had already carried out his own search and showed us a plastic bag, about 1ft by 9in, half full of items he had found. These unfortunately included an open safety pin, one of the 8,000 used by competitors to attach their race numbers. I believe we would have found and removed these had we been given the chance.
Mr Osborne's was the only complaint that we received over the whole weekend, and it would be a great shame if the future use of land in this area of orienteering, with its attendant influx of visitors, were to be in any way jeopardised by a report giving only one side of the issue. – R.S. Coe, chairman, North Glos. Orienteering Club.