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This is probably covered elsewhere, so apologies! Trying to plan for 2022, which I've just now realised means I have to steer between my son's GCSEs, support crew holiday plans, etc etc. What are the best months to try? Realistically although an earlier round would suit I suspect July (or even September?) might be more realistic...perhaps May? (a bit pleading I know!)
Depends! Prioritising daylight tends to be the main factor for most people, so the closer to mid-June the better. I went at the end of April and it worked fine, slightly less daylight but more comfortable temperatures (though some ice over the highest bits of leg 3 first thing in the morning). If I were planning something long now I think I'd go for May, just seems in recent years that late spring/early summer has had the more settled, dry weather, though of course it can crap out at any time of year.
Well ...
At the bottom of this page http://www.bobgrahamclub.org.uk/index.php?page=records is a drop down box showing various records as well as some other ways of dicing the data. One of these is a breakdown of successful rounds per month.
I can also break it down to weeks. Can only do success rates for the last nine years since that's when we went electronic and so have the underlying data.
I was hoping you would reply as I knew would have the info, I just couldn't find it. Thank you!
Here's the success ratio for each month for 2012 to present. Total is the number registered to start in that month, success should be obvious.
+-------------+-------+----------+
| start_month | total | success |
+-------------+-------+----------+
| 1 | 85 | 77 |
| 2 | 4 | 3 |
| 3 | 8 | 4 |
| 4 | 56 | 30 |
| 5 | 246 | 132 |
| 6 | 554 | 302 |
| 7 | 398 | 185 |
| 8 | 231 | 99 |
| 9 | 134 | 46 |
| 10 | 28 | 7 |
| 11 | 2 | 1 |
| 12 | 28 | 4 |
+-------------+-------+----------+
Ignore January and December, there's winter rounds in there plus some where the data isn't complete and defaults to 1st January.
You need to be wary about looking at the above too simplistically, there have been years when there's been very few successes in say June because of bad weather and people just didn't set off. Over time things do even out, you aren't going to get the first weekend in June always being horrendous weather for example.
The "core" months of May, June and July have 617/1198 successes or just over 50% which is pretty much the overall success rate, but hardly surprising since those months dominate. April, August and September are very hit and miss, mostly due to weather plus the shorter daylight hours.
Generally just register for a date that you think might be OK, it's not fixed in stone - you can always change it. Registration just lets us know what to expect in terms of forms/new members and puts a mark next to your proposed start date/time on the website so that others can avoid should they so wish.