This is a very pretty route and it was a lovely day for it. It was also one of my first forays into trail racing and probably a good accesible introduction to trail racing, but a couple of issues let it down:

- no signage to race hq/ start on the day and postcode for sat nav took my taxi driver and quite a few others to a dead end and signs at fork in road would have stopped that. Though the map with final instructions did prove helpful

- only five portaloos - I know the organisers were let down by the provider but they could have tried to manage it a bit better as the queues were enormous and stressful re making the start in time

- queues for race number pick up - I didn't have a problem because I was there early but the queues a bit later were massive suggesting they didn't have enough volunteers on

- start delayed by over half an hour due to the large toilet and number pick up queues - whilst this was absolutely the right decision it was communicated very poorly and resulted in loads of people standing around getting cold - I was lucky a lovely spectator took pity on me and gave me his coat!

- a couple of the marshals were very disinterested and couldn't be bothered to offer any encouragement- by no means representative of most of the marshals who were lovely but not what you want when you're having a tough race

- you only get a medal and a bottle of water at the end - an apple / banana or something would have been nice and not added massively to the cost

There were a couple of other things not really in the organisers control but which also would have bothered me if I'd been a fast runner - there are a couple of out and back points where runners are going in both directions but the path is narrow with gates to traverse so only let's one through at a time. The route also follows a busy footpath so there were lots of other users to weave in between including quite a few inconsiderate dog walkers!