Pennine Bridleway Relay

[Graham Breeze]

So that is a closed door on any distance event over land managed on our behalf by United Utilities where an unmanded gate is? sweet!
Pay attention you Calderdale Hikers.......

As Mr Grump (who is generally very wise in his postings) has earlier noted, Chris Knox "negotiates" on behalf of the FRA on matters such as access and I have in front of me an "Access Agreement for FRA insured events over UU land" negotiated by Chris.

It seems to me to be a very reasonable document and so I have little sympathy with ill-informed criticism of UU who allow a lot of races to take place over their land.

UU will always have tenant farmers with whom they must have a working relationship every day of every year and then one day a year a bunch of fellrunners run across the land.

You really have to be very dim not to have got the message from Rule 19, etc and even dimmer not to realise that if there were to be a subsequent row between long standing UU tenants and some apparently uncontrollable fellrunners, where the sympathy of UU would lie.

My usual mantra is that if you enter a race you follow the rules of the RO (kit, no EOD, etc) whether you like it or not.

Some runners think they know better. Sometimes there are consequences.

[Graeme78]

Confirmed what Graeme78? Theres a farmer a mile from me house who'd blame me for a Tsunami in Peru if I ran through his field............

It confirmed that the initial complaint had come from a farmer rather than UU. If you go back and have a look at my original post, I pointed out the situation described by lefty almost exactly.

[FRAFixtures]

see my post 692. As far as future events at the moment,yes the club could hold the event again next year,but without permission from UU the FRA will not provide insurance,a risk Lefty understandably is unwilling to take.

Run it as a trail race and permit it through UKA - no issue with insurance then.

To my understanding getting insurance isn't the basic issue here. In any case it's the same UKA insurance whether it's Permitted through the FRA or as a Trail race

Without the landowner's permission an organised event such as this can't go ahead, full stop!

[Witton Park]

is that the gate at the end of the Dam on Ady's website?

[multi coloured]

I think a sit down talk with UU by the organisers/reps of other clubs to get the full info and which legs/gates were involved and a plan provided to stop the problem happening again would be a way forward. Sometimes there are other contributing issues that are under the surface and getting these out in the open as well can help. What about bringing in UU as sponsors and call it the UU PBR, get them some publicity and on our side?

I also think that competing clubs should help Rossendale out with marshalling a large event like this. Maybe clubs who enter 3 or more teams should provide a couple of marshalls each ?

This is a marvellous event put on by Rossendale and much loved by runners and it would be a shame to lose it without any further actions being taken.

Maybe PBR could charge every team the race cost plus 2 marshalls per team, 100+ teams, would 200+ marshalls not cover the event ???

[dominion]

I do wonder how United Utilities deal with the issue of gates being left open the other 364 days of the year?
Or how how National Trust deal with parking issues at Brackenclose that are unconnected with BGR groups?

Seems to me that the biggest issue is that organisations such as these are instigating a blame culture and want someone to blame when they're not happy. In this case and that of Bob Graham Rounds they have an organisation that they can blame, regardless of who was at fault.

Did anyone from United Utilities confirm that all the gates were closed prior to the event?

[Witton Park]

Did anyone from United Utilities confirm that all the gates were closed prior to the event?

In a nutshell - I often find gates open and think should I close it - in fact at Lockbank farm SEdbergh last year I shut the fell gate behind me and a few minutes later the farmer (or at least it looked like he was) opened the 2 gates and disappeared back to the farm. I was there for around 20 minutes watching the fell race (English Schools Yr 7) before going back to my car.
I didn't shut the gate as I felt that the farmer had opened it for a reason.

Of course back to the PBR and racing generally, that doesn't help.

Clubs providing marshalls wouldn't work - there's already enough cars knocking about. Leg 1 and 2 would appear to be the problem, so how about 2 sweepers on these legs to follow the race behind? Sweepers are standard on many races anyway and it would help to alleviate the issue if it could be demonstrated that even IF any PBR runners did leave a gate open, that they would all be closed GUARANTEED after the event had passed by.

It should be said though, that any teams that do not shut gates on leg 2 specifically will be DQd and banned from future events.

If the UU evidence "clearly shows" a breach of the rule, have the teams involved been DQd or any action taken against them?

[john doe]

In a nutshell - I often find gates open and think should I close it - in fact at Lockbank farm SEdbergh last year I shut the fell gate behind me and a few minutes later the farmer (or at least it looked like he was) opened the 2 gates and disappeared back to the farm. I was there for around 20 minutes watching the fell race (English Schools Yr 7) before going back to my car.
I didn't shut the gate as I felt that the farmer had opened it for a reason.

Of course back to the PBR and racing generally, that doesn't help.

Clubs providing marshalls wouldn't work - there's already enough cars knocking about. Leg 1 and 2 would appear to be the problem, so how about 2 sweepers on these legs to follow the race behind? Sweepers are standard on many races anyway and it would help to alleviate the issue if it could be demonstrated that even IF any PBR runners did leave a gate open, that they would all be closed GUARANTEED after the event had passed by.

It should be said though, that any teams that do not shut gates on leg 2 specifically will be DQd and banned from future events.

If the UU evidence "clearly shows" a breach of the rule, have the teams involved been DQd or any action taken against them?

UU's evidence came off the foto link on Rossendale website.Doesn't matter if a sweeper was following the last team making sure all gates where shut,it was a rule that individual teams shut each gate behind them.

[Witton Park]

UU's evidence came off the foto link on Rossendale website.Doesn't matter if a sweeper was following the last team making sure all gates where shut,it was a rule that individual teams shut each gate behind them.

Lefty said the event website - which suggests the pictures taken by Ady at the end of the dam.

I also organise events, including fell, although no fell event on the scale of this. But anyone who has run XC at Witton knows we have similar issues with gates on the farm land that takes in the Saucer.
The farmer is liased with, as is his landlord (BwD Council) and we have checks to make sure that we close the gates afterwards as you can imagine shutting during the event is not feasible and the future of XC events at Witton relies on the farmers support especially as it is not a public right of way.

I would argue that it's rarely feasible to shut the gates on Leg 1 so sweepers would be a clear benefit.

On leg 2 it should be feasible to close gates as the field is more spread out by then, but where there is any risk, you take reasonable steps to mitigate the risk. Sweepers on leg 2 would, in my opinion, be a reasonable step by the RO and would most likely be acceptable to any reasonable landlord / tenant, who I can imagine gets thoroughly frustrated by the problem occurring on the other 364 days of the year.

I would also say, as in my last post, that if evidence is so clear that UU are at the moment saying no more race that evidence should also be clear enough to DQ the teams involved and ban them from future events - looking at the pictures I'm not sure it's that clear though.

It's clear this is a great and popular event and I'm sure Lefty and his team are extremely frustrated and disappointed by this - I know I get a great buzz as a RO by putting the event on and seeing everyone have a great time and want to come back for more. I hope they don't give up and seek ways to either satisfy UU that
1. they will take further steps to satisfy them (a DQ and ban may help there).
2. They explore other route options for leg 2 (many races have changed routes over the years - and it would mean Andi Jones can relax now ref the leg 2 record)

[MorganW]

Or how how National Trust deal with parking issues at Brackenclose that are unconnected with BGR groups?

Seems to me that the biggest issue is that organisations such as these are instigating a blame culture and want someone to blame when they're not happy. In this case and that of Bob Graham Rounds they have an organisation that they can blame, regardless of who was at fault.

I don't know how they deal with non-BG issues. I only know how they deal with BG issues as someone on the end of their concern and anger.

Support groups were abusive to NT staff when requested to both pay for parking and to adopt some consideration for other users whilst in the car park at Brackenclose.

One of the developments with BG support groups is that some of them believe that the normal rules of good behaviour don't apply to them, even when on someone else's land. They believe this sufficiently to be quite happy to make it clear when tackled what they are about, effectively implying that NT rules and a bit of consideration for others doesn't apply to them, because they are engaged on same "great endeavour".

That's why the NT knew exactly where to come to deliver some pain.

This type of behaviour is arrogance of a high order IMHO.

The Grump metioned an own goal; this was another.

Slowly but surely goodwill leaches away in all sorts of directions.