WEG Total Chaos

Given that there was an accident on the M4 and japfest was on if you did not arrive early enough you queued as far as I remember - was camping so not relevant to me particularly - there were fewer issues than anticipated with japfest though really and agree it usually runs pretty well but even so I think arriving for an event where 50k are expected at 9.15 for a 10.30 start is a bit foolish! - I wouldn't do it for badders which is well practiced at moving large quantities of cars let alone more of a one off.
 
Honey08 said:
I have missed the start of Badminton once, the first time I went, through queuing traffic, I had expected to arrive an hour early, but had to queue for an hour and a half. I remember Capt Mark Phillips playing hell in his column about having to queue for the 2012 Bramham too because traffic was so bad. I always aim to arrive at 8am for an 11am start nowadays, and have a coffee watching everyone queue in.

That said, the chaos in France sounded more than just general queues, more like bad planning. Shame because the course looked as though it would be good for a regular event.
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They already do Honey - http://www.legrandcomplet.com/english/
 
To tired and upset to say too much but to have time to just open the car doors and PISS on road side without a single car moving says something of the chaos that it was. We got to see 10 horses jump the cross country and the one hour journey took 5 hours. The traffic and parking for the Kur was a shambles and the helpers had just walked away and people had to just leave cars all over the place. The shuttle buses where to few and far between and could not move down blocked road anyway.
The village did not open till 11am so you could not enjoy getting there early to enjoy that before an afternoon session. The stand owners were not happy at all. Like Rolling said the helpers stood smoking and chatting to them selves and you had to tap them on the shoulder to ask for help.
Also I believe that the eventing horses when shipped to Caen for the show jumping had no stables to rest in while waiting.

I will say that if you made it to the stadium the Kur was fantastic and the eventing show jumping as well. And the fact that you could hear a pin drop when Zara Phillips did her round was just wonderful.

We also had a saviour on this Forum who made a most stressful day have a lovely ending THANK YOU RR.
 
I wasn't sure if you meant me, Esther, so posted again to clarify.

Interesting Teapot that it is a regular event. I wonder if it's better when a bit smaller, and worth visiting. I had a look and a weekend pass is cheaper than dressage day at Badders or Burghley. I'm quite tempted to do a foreign one for a change.

If nothing else, this thread has reminded me to set off really early for Burghley on Saturday, it's the first year in ages we haven't camped.
 
Having lived in Normandy for 14 years and only returning to the Uk last year. I can understand the utter chaos it's the French way unfortuately. No one cares about anything or anybody. Totalloy the wrong country to hold such and international event.
 
Honey08 said:
I wasn't sure if you meant me, Esther, so posted again to clarify.

Interesting Teapot that it is a regular event. I wonder if it's better when a bit smaller, and worth visiting. I had a look and a weekend pass is cheaper than dressage day at Badders or Burghley. I'm quite tempted to do a foreign one for a change.

If nothing else, this thread has reminded me to set off really early for Burghley on Saturday, it's the first year in ages we haven't camped.
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Afaik it's meant to be a good event. Don't forget there's Saumur, Pau or Luhmuhlen (I fancy Luhmuhlen one day) too
 
Yes, I've heard of the others and considered them, but used to be fluent in French and Italian (and have spent a few years living there, so have a soft spot for those countries). Hubby would also like to do Mont San Michel and the war graves, so it could perhaps be a holiday in Northern France that combines the lot..
 
I am just back from WEG, watching the Three Day Event and the Kur on Friday. We had a great time. Lovely campsite,
loved the loos at the X country, atmosphere at the stadium was great. Saw at least one horse over the all XC fences, although no dramas and siat and watched the big screen at the end of the day when we were tired after our early start and walking. Talked to lots of lovely people from every nation.

There were traffic jams on the way in, but what do you expect? We got in to XC just as the first horses were starting, and we got into all our seats for the stadium events in plenty of time. You know there is going to be a queue, so you give yourself plenty of time. Once the queues got moving it was fine.

The worst part was the first day XC dressage day (and the rain) where there weren't enough food outlets for everyone at lunch time, but we got our chips in the end. (No coffee on sale!!!) Also that the Village didn't open until 11.00 a.m., so we didn't get a chance to have an in depth look around or time to watch the displays.

It didn't all go perfectly, the journey travel times were optomistic, but we had a great tour of France thrown in! We did mention to the Montreal rep (2018 venue) that the split sites weren't a great idea maybe, but several of our party are serioulsy planning to go to Canada as they had such a great time. Of course, it helps when the Brits win medals.


It is sad to hear that many people had a bad experience and missed the event they had got tickets for, anyone would be upset about that, but my personal experience of the organisation by the French was good, overall. And totally agree about the fantastic food available in the nearby cafes.
 
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If anyone plans to go to Normandy, this area, I can give the details of our suoperb gîte. The owner was totaly amazing, so kind and welcoming, and absolutely livid about the so-called organisation.


Honey08 said:
Yes, I've heard of the others and considered them, but used to be fluent in French and Italian (and have spent a few years living there, so have a soft spot for those countries). Hubby would also like to do Mont San Michel and the war graves, so it could perhaps be a holiday in Northern France that combines the lot..
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perfecthands said:
I can understand the utter chaos it's the French way unfortuately. No one cares about anything or anybody. Totalloy the wrong country to hold such and international event.
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I've lived here for ages and that's a bit of a sweeping statement you've made. It's not very fair either, the Norman mentality is just different from other nations' mentalities. One example I can think of is the parking situation at Le Pin where the organisers must have assumed that we would get out of the field by following the road, but most took the shortest route and the only way to get out at the end was over a couple of muddy ditches, through a hedge and over barbed wire. In Badminton there was a stile. That's just the difference, but it's not because the Normans (or the French come to that) couldn't care less about anyone or anything. I think it really was bad organisation on the part of the organisation.
 
kandor said:
I've lived here for ages and that's a bit of a sweeping statement you've made. It's not very fair either, the Norman mentality is just different from other nations' mentalities. One example I can think of is the parking situation at Le Pin where the organisers must have assumed that we would get out of the field by following the road, but most took the shortest route and the only way to get out at the end was over a couple of muddy ditches, through a hedge and over barbed wire. In Badminton there was a stile. That's just the difference, but it's not because the Normans (or the French come to that) couldn't care less about anyone or anything. I think it really was bad organisation on the part of the organisation.
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Hey Kandor, that's the parking place I walked through coming from my place, lol. Now if you ever come for a visit just take that same road, turn right down the lane marked "Foret 2000" and just keep descending(if you have a 4x4;) road turns to dirt for a couple hundred yards...And when I cut through that parking area there were a lot of Germans, Italians, Canadians and Aussies taking that same route through the ditches and barbed wire....lol...rr
 
We attended the kur on Friday - tgot there earlier than expected and ended up just where the stadium fencing ended to queue from - entirely expected and tbh got chatting to people and the time passed - the only thing that would have been nice was a few drinks stands or something along the queue line to grab something from but we got great seats inside,short queue for food but apparently the toilest were an experience :P The queues to the cross country were beyond a joke - we left from St aubin de mer at 7 am ( a journey that had taken us about an hour and ten when we went to walk the cross country ) we parked eventually at 1.30pm and made it onto the course at about 2pm - a real shame as it had a fabulous feel about it - I think it was yes sheer volume but none of the police had any info to give us - just a shrug of the shoulders
 
You may live there as I did for all those years. you may feel it's a sweeping statement that's your choice. However it is the French way and it is a pity for all those decent French people, but it is in all aspects of French life supermarkets brico stores on the road, care which I experienced at first hand. I agree about bad organisation but that is also a French trait. How many times did we go to a functions only to find it was utter chaos. As for care I only hope no one on here who lives in France has to have it; I won't go any further this is not the place but I completely stand by what I say!
 
Just got back from WEG and wanted to add our experience to the thread as have felt quite angry at some of the self righteous brigade saying we should have left earlier - if everyone had left earlier the queue would simply have started earlier! There was just no way of getting that many people into two entrances.

We left later than we wanted as our French hosts were coming and they were not in a great hurry being locals as they knew the area, so we got away at 8.30am and drove round Caen and down the motorway, exiting easily at the toll - so far so good.

Then on the road to Argentan we joined a stationary queue that stretched as far as the eye could see so we switched off our engines - it was barely moving and the sat nav said we still had 11 miles to go!

We inched our way along the road then our French friends saw a man tending his garden, so they asked if there was another way. Some Aussies in a hire car saw we were turning around and took a chance by following us. Several small roads later we approached Argentan from the south, but we arrived at a grid locked roundabout. The lead car decided to go around the stuck traffic with two wheels up the roundabout, but as we had a 4wd we couldn't fit inside, so I reversed back and drove across the central reservation to turn around, and then Aussies who were not in a 4wd like us said to hell with it, it's a hire car and they shot over it in hot pursuit of us :)

We were now approaching from another direction (after a manic Benny Hill style stop for coffee and loos at a supermarket somewhere), and our sat nav said we were just 4 miles from the event but we turned a corner to find yet another almost stationary queue. People had abandoned cars anywhere they could park, by the side of the road, little grass bays, down tracks, bits of fields - including one parked straddling a ditch!

We parked in a field which belonged to a hotel along with at least a hundred other cars, and set off with our backpacks. We walked around 3 miles mostly uphill. We got to the event just before 2pm, and walked past near-empty car parks in time to see around 20 horses jump.

I go to Badminton and Burghley regularly, and have left at various times, sometimes being caught out, but I have never been stationary for hours at either. I have arrived at Burghley at mid-day when I had other commitments and driven straight in with no queues, because everyone had got in by then.

At Haras du Pin there were just not enough entrances - both Badminton and Burghley have at least 4 car parks with different approaches and cars are directed off the motorways and along many main roads so that the traffic is dispersed around the venue, utilising many roads and spreading the load. The difference is that they have had years to perfect this, and the organisers at Haras du Pin have not had to deal with this much traffic before, although how they didn't realise it would be a problem is beyond me.

We never did meet our French friends as there was no signal on our phones, so a day that we had planned with them just turned into a nightmare. We did hear that our Aussie friends got in a good hour before us - they saw a barrier blocking off a little side road, and the French volunteer manning the barricade waved them away, but they just waved merrily back and drove up the road where we later walked and parked in a field next to the event - as they said in the earlier loo queue, we've come half way across the world to see this, and we are going to get in!
 
OK let's just agree to disagree :-)

But bad organisation is never down to an entire nation; that just defies logic, it's more down to individuals.
 
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I posted what I wanted to say on the wrong WEG post the trip has mushed my brain!! keep posting on this thread and see if H&H mentions the bad points. Yes we saw some fantastic horsemanship but we had to put up with sh#t to see it.
 
kandor said:
OK let's just agree to disagree :-)

But bad organisation is never down to an entire nation; that just defies logic, it's more down to individuals.
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Again(believe I wrote this earlier, but maybe it was somewhere else,) the locals I know here, French and some English, who are NORMALLY INVOLVED in national and international(but not of this scope,) events at the Haras du Pin where shunned off by the organizers!!!! These people did not want to know(I believe you English say,) and many of the mates I've been speaking with said that they wern't even HORSE PEOPLE!!! Of course the French are not as organized in general as many other cultures, which I kind of love about the place; that's just a given, but ALL OF MY NORMAN MATES are FURIOUS at the image given to their region and especially of the Haras du Pin by this fiasco.

I join Kandor and Rollin and others in saying how much I love living here etc. But nothing can be said for those of you who came from SO FAR and spent SO MUCH to end up in such a nightmare. Trully, though not French, I deeply apologize.

richard rider
 
I'll just add our experience to the discussion... the XC transport and catering organisation was abysmal. We left our campsite at Falaise at 8.15am, drove down the motorway and into Argentan with no problems, and then on the middle of what looked like the Argentan ring road we hit the queue of traffic. That was about 9am. It then took us slightly over 2 hours to reach the car park at Haras du Pins. The problems have mostly already been noted - at least three pinch points, roundabouts and junctions, where two or three lanes of traffic all headed for the XC merged, with no traffic control. In the end, there was only one (ONE!!) way in to the car parks for traffic from our direction. It was extremely tedious. We crept forward metre by metre, watching people get out to pee, and then later people abandoning their cars and setting out to walk. As we had no satnav, we didn't know exactly how much further there was to go so that seemed a risky strategy. We had innocently hoped to see the start at 10am, or at worst Zara at 10.40am. In the end, it was about 11.10am when we finally parked, and then we had a long walk to the course. At least the toilets were OK and plentiful.

Once oriented, we did manage to see William F-P start, which was great. It was a wonderful course (long, demanding and hilly for we spectators too), and a good atmosphere. And we managed to see a horse at every jump.

The downside, once in the venue, was the abysmal catering. For 50k people, I counted three vans doing pizza and chips, one doing crepes, and several bars and sweet stalls. When we thought about lunch, the queues for the food stalls looked like they would mean a wait of 1 - 2 hours. So lunch was a bag of sweets. I did queue up for a coffee, only to be told when I reached the server that there would be a long wait. So in desperation I ordered a small cider. And that in total was what two of ate and drank between 11.30am and when we got back to the car (where I had water) at 5pm. At least that meant I didn't need to use the toilets at the end of the day.

There was also traffic chaos leaving the site. Yes, there was only one way out for everyone, back to Argentan and the pinch points, where the traffic finally dispersed. The 30km journey back to Falaise took only 2 hours. We were hungry, dehydrated and exhausted.

Sunday in Caen was a much better experience. We found the park and ride site easily,with minimal queueing, and were in the games village by 1pm. As we got out of our car, a French lady who'd just parked next to us walked over and said 'You British organise these things so much better. Yesterday was a disaster.' It turned out she had been to both Badminton and Burghley in the past so knew what she was talking about.

We enjoyed the village, had lunch, and got the shuttle back to the stadium about 3pm - the benefit of our riders having done so well, and all jumping towards the end, was that we wandered in to the stadium with no queue at all! The sight lines from our seats were perfect, and it was lovely to sit still and watch everyone, and enjoy the slightly partisan French crowd and try to cheer more for our riders than the Germans did for theirs. As someone else said, the silence for our riders, and all of those near the top, was very impressive.

I liked the German team lap of honour - it was like a cavalry drill ride, all four of them lined up perfectly. They are sickeningly good.

After the prize giving we drove round the peripherique into Caen, and enjoyed William the Conqueror's castle with its great views. Then we drove north to the car ferry port to catch the overnight ferry to Portsmouth. we counted 10 horseboxes arriving for that sailing, and from the grooms' jackets and teeshirts they were carrying horses for riders from Australia (including Paul Tapner), NZ, Brazil, Ireland and Netherlands. Some of the grooms were sitting near us in the ship's restaurant later, and I spoke briefly to two Dutch grooms, to congratulate them on their team bronze. They seemed genuinely pleased and introduced me to one of their riders - I think the one who was eliminated or retired XC. It would have been fun to speak to the Australians and NZers, but I couldn't in the circumstances think what to say.. 'Sorry that Toddy fell off and that Nereo had three showjumps down''. I don't think so!
 
Rollin said:
I will be writing to a number of folk after two dreadful days spent in traffic gridlock, queues and in seats which should not have been sold in the first place.

So I don't have to repeat myself look at the Endurance Horse dies, thread.

More to come. A Management Case Study perhaps on how NOT to run an event.
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You need to write to the FEI and the organisers. We tried to get to the eventing and along with lots of people did not get there because of the traffic grid lock nearly 16 miles away.

I wrote on the WEG site and also then emailed FEI who gave me the below email box that they advise has been set up specially because of the issues by the laughingly so called "organisers".

In contrast we had no problems of access to the stadium at Caen or the village.


public@normandie2014.com

Regards
 
Adding my WEG experience to this thread
From the sounds of it i was amoung the lucky people
We chose to stay South-East from Haras in a gorgeous gite near the beautiful town of Sees. We had no traffic into Haras and we didn't even leave early, probably didn’t get into car until 9.30-10 ish. Amazingly we met no traffic control or police or anything. Did everyone just come from the Caen direction? Did no one stay anywhere else? We parked on wide verges near the Haras Hippodrome where it seemed everyone coming from our direction just parked up – no signs for parking or a single high-viz busy person. But parked only a 2 min walk from the entrance so that suited us fine. No signs, no control, but as we’d walked the course earlier in the week and visited the stud itself to see gorgeous Percherons we knew the lie of the land. We’d also taken note of the lack of food at Haras so brought a massive picnic of cidre, pastries, baguettes, cheese etc. I also noticed all the French did the big picnic thing also. interesting. Maybe the don’t expect food at their events? Maybe burger vans just don’t happen in France? Don’t know.

For us the total lack of organisation was actually a benefit as we got to see eventing dressage earlier in the week when we didn’t have tickets, we just had a course walk permission with our XC tickets but nobody said you couldn’t watch dressage that day and it was wide open. Score!

Our picnics and easy driving made it a great experience. We also attended events in Caen on 2 separate days and found the park and ride to be only 10min walk from the stadiums so didn’t bother with buses so maybe that made life easier for us too. All in all we had a great time, got to see everything up really close, had a very relaxed experience mostly because we adapted to the French method of not giving a toss and never queueing for anything lol. I guess if we’d stayed in Caen and got stuck in traffic and didn’t know about the must-do massive picnic it might not have been so nice. But I’ll look back on WEG 2014 as a brilliant experience.
 
Molasses, great to hear you had a good day out.

You were in Sees just a few kms from the Haras. People came from all over France. With only one Toll exit from the motorway taking both tickets (put your ticket in, this is the cost, pay your money, wait for your change or enter your credit card) and telepaye - as we have. (It speeds throughput as our toll charges are taken directly from our bank account.) There was bound to be a problem.

We drove through to the north exit with no problems until about 2kms from Haras. About 6 miles of traffic was stationery for over an hour. We turned round and found another route. I am sure the miles of people behind us never made it.

This was because a bottleneck of three roads had no Police or Stewards to speed throughput. People abandoned their cars on verges and at the entrance to private properties and walked.

As for French not giving a toss, we queue in good mannered fashion for our local speciality shops on high days and holidays. I have never met a queue jumper when we visit the cinema in Angers some movies are quickly sold out.

The queue jumping at Caen was caused by coaches unloading at the entrance to the Stade when there were already miles of people who had been waiting patiently for an hour for gates to open.
 
I felt rather guilty about my chirpy report, when I read of the terrible experiences of others, so it is a relief to read Molasses' report.

Our coach driver said that when we joined the queue to the cross country we were about 10 minutes away, which took an hour to negotiate and although a great deal of the time we were creeping along, at times it moved a lot faster. I don't know whether the Police were being kinder to the coaches. The actual parking place for the coaches was good and worked very well.

At Caen and at the Village I didn't notice any queue jumping and once the gates opened everyone got in quickly. I think we were all very annoyed that the Village didn't open until 11.00, even though it stayed open to 11.00 p.m. I wonder how busy it was in the evening.

I look back on the whole experience as a good one.
 
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