Tough course but well sign-posted. An enjoyable event but slightly tarnished by the relatively poor organisation.
Firstly the positives:
All of the people involved were very friendly and supportive and I think there was a really positive atmosphere despite the very early start!
The swim was a zig-zag format which I found to work reasonably well and it didn't hinder my swim time as much as I thought it might.
The cycle course was really nice, quite undulating and the road surface was quite reasonable. Lots of marshalls out on the course which is always good to see!
The run course was particularly tough but offered stunning scenery. A real pleasure to run through. There were numerous gates on the run course as well as some surprinsingly steep sections which definitely added to the experience!
The finish 'line' - lots of people congregated in what was quite a small space but it definitely made for a great atmosphere!
The negatives:
I'm not sure who was a volunteer and who was 'staff' per se but very few people seemed to have much idea of what was going on.
At registration, numerous participants were assigned the wrong number, or the wrong chip which made working out the timings especially difficult.
Swim waves were a little mixed up amongst the slower swimmers but this didn't seem to matter too much as it tends to be only the faster swimmers that care and who therefore generally organise themselves.
In transition, I noticed that by the time the first swimmer was out, organisers still hadn't decided where the entrance to T1 should be and the 'Bike out' had not even been opened. One guy had to sprint to the other end of transition to open the barriers to allow the cyclist out. Not ideal.
The cycle route was fine although there was no mount/dismount line, just a general 'area' where you mount/dismount which was mildly confusing initially but obviously beginner friendly.
Similarly the finish line didn't seem to exist, it was an 'area' of the grass. Unfortunately it also turned out you hadn't actually finished until you handed your chip to the timing guy. A queue quickly formed where multiple finishers arrived at the same time.
Regarding the chip timing, I don't really think it worked very well at all. There were no timing mats to cross (whereby the chip is normally worn on the ankle) so I suspect a lot of times had to be somehow calculated manually. Consequently, lots of split times are missing/wrong for quite a number of participants.
I can generally forgive all of these points at it was very much a local event, which had a great atmosphere, however the cost of the event was on par with some larger and more organised races so it was disappointing to see that some corners had been cut.