David Currie

Had great fun at the Wimborne Orienteers Night Owl event this evening. Moors Valley Country Park has a dense path network so controls were never far from a track. This meant you could sprint most of the time and the only problem with navigation was trying not to overshoot some of the smaller path junctions. Unfortunately I didn’t twig straight away that I should be able to get all of the controls and had to go back for one at the end but still managed all 26 in 53:54.

Setting up the start in the pouring rain wasn’t ideal preparation for my run at this year’s SOC November Classic. The map was named “The Reptile Centre” after the tourist attraction at the northern end. As I set out of the start I new it was going to be a slow run – I could still feel last week’s KIMM in my legs. This was made worse by the brashings littering the forest floor and the mudbaths that passed for paths. I felt the course could have been better as too often I found myself following some obvious line feature in to the control. Consequently, the couple of navigational errors I made were mainly due to tiredness. Still managed 83 minutes for 12.7km which isn’t too sluggish. Unfortunately a trio of touring Scandinavian buses meant that I was well down the results with Mats Troeng clocking in at a mere 63 minutes and his brother not far behind!

At least we had a chance to dry of afterwards with a nice meal at The Oak Inn, Bank with friends. I can recommend the Thai fish cakes!

It was the first SOC street event of the winter tonight. As usual, Richard Jeans had drawn up a map of Lyndhurst with fire hydrants, street lamps and post boxes as controls. I set off North out of the town centre and made the mistake of spending too long picking off the low scoring controls on the way out. My LED Petzl was fading and it was proving difficult to find some of the hydrants in the dark.

I passed Mike Yeo running in the opposite direction after about half an hour. I knew Mike had only been to the controls far out at Bank so decided that I wouldn’t go out there. Instead, I tried to get as many of the medium scoring controls on the outskirts of Lyndhurst. This strategy seemed to pay off and, returning with about a minute to go, I had managed all but six of the controls.

Christine had her evening event at Denny Lodge tonight. Only a small turnout (16 people) but then that’s what we’d hoped for given the limited parking. Most importantly, we had lots of help collecting in controls and made it to The Crown Strirrup in time to demolish a very large fish pie.