David Currie

718Last weekend saw the British Orienteering Champs come to the New Forest. Things didn’t get off to a good start for us – Emma started to develop spots on Friday which by Saturday morning looked very like chicken pox. In the end Emma did come to Hampton Ridge (where there were at least two other children in a similar predicament!) but Christine had missed her run by this point. I may as well have missed mine. I was off as first starter on M21L but certainly wasn’t the first to find number one on my course! You can read the gory details in my comments on RouteGadget (Course 8). Mercifully our shift helping didn’t prove too onerous (although we have been jointly responsible for creating all of the information material for the event).

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704Happy New Year! We’re over with Christine’s family at the moment and today took the opportunity of some more local orienteering by attending NGOC’s score event at Parkend. When Christine, her Dad and I set off from home I still wasn’t quite sure whether I was going to run as my cough/cold is still lingering but, as we drove through the frost covered forest, I decided that it was simply too cold not to (the car thermometer was showing -2°C)!
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We spent Christmas at my parents’ this year and had a relaxing few days. The excitement of Christmas was slow to grow on Emma and she had to be enticed in to opening presents. She started to warm to it a bit after that. Thankfully our Fisher Price heliport and lift and load depot off eBay went down well (they just don’t make them like that any more) and The Tickle Book and The Bedtime Bear are now regulars on the reading list. Yesterday we headed back down to Southampton via the Southern Navigators’ event at Long Valley.
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On Sunday I had my second orienteer of the week and, courtesy of Aunty Sarah babysitting, Christine had her third. It was another short trip in to the Forest of Dean, this time to the BOK Gallopen at Headless Hill. For the Forest of Dean, the area was remarkably free of undergrowth and brashings and Alice and Mark had planned a good set of courses. My problem, as with most of the forest, is the hills. They’re steep and consequently I don’t enjoy running up them, down them, or around them. This was made worse by the previous night’s heavy soaking which meant the carpet of leaves covered a good slick layer of mud.

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