This was all effing brilliant. Given the complexity of the project, plus the fact that ALL of it is run by volunteers it deserves a Nobel price.
Louth run out of food? Oh well, on PBP 2015, people paid extra for their pre-ride meal, and the organisers run out of food before everyone was being served so riders had to start on an empty stomach. (Luckily I did not rely on the pre-ride meal but did my own thing.) And at the finish, it took them ages to get the really icky pre-packaged pasta meal heated, and it tasted like old rubber. Did I complain? of course not. If you want a 5 star holiday, go and book one at the Hilton.
Rider behaviour. I think some kind of ground rules need to be established (something like this:
http://www.dereham.norfolk.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Violence-poster-2016.pdf ), sent out to the riders previously, displayed at the controls in various languages, and come with some penalties (swearing at a volunteer: 2 hours time penalty, physical abuse like throwing something at a volunteer: immediate ban from the ride....)
My other half volunteered on the Thursday and Friday at the finish, and told me a few hair-raising stories. One - I think American - rider asked her if LEL Team could take care of a traffic fine he had received when driving to the start. When her sense of humour failed (she had done an 26 hour shift from Thursday, 10am to Friday, 12am), the rider's response was: "Bitch!" Sure, people are tired, but such behaviour is utterly unacceptable (even if you were not dealing with volunteers, but paid employees).
I can't understand why people get worked up about not being woken up on time. Ever thought how effing complex it is to run a dorm? Set your own alarm, and take the wake up service as an additional benefit, but don't rely on it. As everyone got earplugs, and the snoring and farting in the dorms is much more annoying than an alarm clock, I don't understand why people get discouraged to set their own alarm.
I think that Danial to some degree offers too much service, which then at times is impossible to provide for 1500 riders, and then leads to disappointments. In Loughton, for instance, there were way too few towels. Why provide towls in the first place? Tell people clearly: If you want a towl, bring your own (the lightweight camping stuff is brilliant, and dries out in an hour or two - one may even sell one LEL branded one in the shop beforehand?) or dry yourself with your used cycling kit (this may sound yucky but I can tell you from experience: it works amazingly well!).
I also don't understand why the jerseys had to be handed out by volunteers at the start. Force GB has an existing logistics network, why not let them post the stuff to riders? ( I did a couple of hours of volunteering at the merchandise booth in the afternoon of registration day - it was much harder work than rider registration , which I did during the morning.)
qualification: I doubt it would change a thing, apart from increasing the organisational admin ahead of the ride. My personal impression was that I saw fewer extremely inexperienced riders than on PBP 2015. back then, there were an amazing number of riders on the road who clearly did not know what they were doing, and where you wondered how they ever managed to complete a 200. Failure rate on PBP was also much higher than in previous years, despite the weather being really good.
Moreover, on LEL you have examples like Fiona from Germany. She was MM start group (2.5 hours behind me) and she first passed me between Edinburgh and Innerleiten, pulling two blokes who sat on her rear wheel up a hill. I tried to latch on too but decided this was too fast for me.
I met them again later that night just before Brampton, when they and others got engaged in a thrilling road race to the control.
I chatted to her on Thursday when she was pulling a train of ten or so riders through the Fens towards St. Ives. Turns out she was on her first Audax, and only scraped into the ride due to Danial giving women a preference on the waiting list.