Last weekend we were over in the Forest of Dean for the Southern Championships weekend. The Saturday was a middle distance race on Mallards Pike. Somehow, I’d managed to remember our start block as being from 3:30, not 13:30 and it was only when we were sat having lunch at about half 12 that Christine’s Mum spotted my mistake (her Dad was meant to have already started). Although we weren’t actually all that late once we got there it had been a bit of a rush and I wasn’t really thinking straight when I started off on the Black course in to an area full of ditches. Thankfully (and this was actually part of my plan), I ended up at control three and just had to back-track the short distance to the first control.
Archive for the ‘Orienteering’ Category
Snow, mud and brambles
Sunday, February 28th, 2010Local orienteering
Saturday, February 13th, 2010First orienteering of 2010
Sunday, January 31st, 2010We went to the BKO Concorde Chase event at Upper Start Posts today. It was our first event of 2010 (just squeezed in to January) and the first time we’d done split starts with two children. It didn’t look like a promising start with sub-zero temperatures as we left home but thankfully the parking/assembly area was in a sunny clearing. Emma walked all the way round the string course whilst Christine was out on her course and I had Duncan in the BabyBjörn.
Cranky competition
Sunday, December 20th, 2009Second to Sam
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009On Sunday we were up early for the SOC event at Queen Elizabeth Country Park. Sufficiently early that by 9 o’clock Emma wanted to go home! It was, to be fair, bitterly cold and the orienteering parking was on the opposite side of the A3 to all the Christmas tree and playground action at the Visitors’ Centre. Perhaps more importantly for a recently potty (but not yet bush) trained child, the toilets were also quite a long way away!
Classic New Forest
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Yesterday was SOC’s annual November Classic orienteering event. This year the venue was Eyeworth and Bentley (around Fritham). I probably made a mistake in asking for my start time to be moved forward to something closer to my brother’s (rather than vice-versa) as we got soaked running to the start. The rain had pretty much ceased by the time my course made it out in to the open though and when I finished the sun was actually shining.
Wet Windy Wales
Monday, October 26th, 2009This weekend was my third OMM partnering with Neil Broderick on the B course, with the Elan Valley as the setting for this attempt. We weren’t due to start until nearly midday on Saturday and, with Christine’s parents our base just over an hour away from the event, it was set to be a very civilised start on the Saturday morning. Unfortunately, Neil was suffering from a stomach bug and on Friday night we weren’t even sure we were going to start at all.
First orienteering for Duncan
Saturday, October 17th, 2009At two weeks old we thought it was about time Duncan experienced some orienteering so we all headed along to SOC’s local event at Avon Tyrrell today. “Local” is a relative term as, being on the far side of the New Forest, it’s nearly 30 miles each way for us to get there. Christine took Duncan and Emma round the white course whilst I did the score event. Simon Whipple had planned an imaginative course to make the most of a small area. There were two sets of master maps, one at each end of the area with half the controls on each. My brain wasn’t entirely switched on having spent an hour or so up with Duncan in the middle of the night and hence trying to track which of 34 controls I had been to proved taxing. Also, despite having been told that one control had the wrong code on it I still ran around like a headless chicken for a couple of minutes when I came to it. It would also have been helpful if there had actually been a feature on the map in the middle of each control circle!
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