orienteering at constantia green belt

I had a absolutely terrible race at Constantia today. I'll start the race report with a picture of the terrain.



Doesn't look too bad? And for most of the race it isn't. They use these interesting controls here in the Cape, the control sheet has two letters on it, for example no 10 below is "QT".



When you get to the correct control, you have to write down the letter on it, in this case "A".



It's quite simple, once you get used to it. Here's the map for the event, the brown stain is from the mud, when I fell in the river...



First mistake was at no 2, I wasn't sure how deep into the rough they would send us on a park event, so I stuck to the path, thinking I would see the control clearly. I should have been less conservative and headed straight into the rough.



Second mistake was at no 7 to 8. In the perfect world everything would be on the map, and we would read the map properly. I was going down the main path and saw a path turning left (see red line drawn above), I assumed it was the one leading to the control, but it was a unmapped path. I'm not sure what I was thinking at this point, because I misread where the bridge over the river was (see the red circle above), and convinced myself that I was at the right spot, ie. the bridge should be after the control, when in fact it was before the control. I continued searching, while everybody else was running past...

Third mistake was at no 16. I'm pretty sure they put the control at the wrong ditch / river. I spent close to 10 minutes searching in one (very overgrown) spot, and eventually started searching lower down once I noticed some people moving through that area. I eventually found the control where the red circle is drawn. Then to top it all off, I noticed the path on the left leading to the road, so I started off in that direction, I then completely forgot that I was heading to the path and took a shortcut through the rough (where I was searching before) to get to the road, this is where I fell into the river, and after getting out of the mess and onto the road, I realised I had lost my control card and had to return to the river to search for it.

The biggest two lessons I learnt where:
1) I must try and be more flexible with the details on the maps. They can't always be 100% correct.
2) If you're convinced you're at the right spot, and you've checked the area once without finding the control, and you check it a second time without finding a control, move on, because the control is not going to appear out off thin air!