David Currie

932Friday night was the orienteering club AGM at Fleming Park leisure centre. I picked up trophies for Christine and myself and Philip Cooper gave an entertaining presentation on his orienteering travels (or, to be more accurate, his actuarial travels with lots of orienteering tacked on) followed by a quiz which netted me a bar of chocolate. The flat roof of the building meant that Philip was nearly drowned out by the sound of the long overdue rain hammering down. When the meeting ended I made a dash for the car and it was only as I drove away that I heard the tinkling of glass from the rear windscreen…

A note on the front windscreen explained everything: “I am so sorry, my little son broke your windscreen by a stone.” This was, however, a very honest chap as it also gave his name and phone number. The following day we therefore had the windscreen replaced under the car insurance and the errant boy’s father has promised to transfer the excess to our bank account. I didn’t offer to return to him the stone that was still resting on our parcel shelf! Other than the sound of glass tipping back and forth when the boot is opened (it will eventually grind itself small enough to come out the drainage holes we were told), everything is now back as it should be.

905We arrived at Saturday’s orienteering a little later than planned. Emma had been up for hours in the night for no particular reason but compensated by getting up late in the morning. Having arrived shortly after 11 at Island Thorns (via Fritham) there was still just about time for both of us to get a run. Christine went out on the green whilst I started off with Emma and Duncan on the yellow. The planner warned me that the rides weren’t particularly buggy friendly and, given that Emma needed to try and climb every tree we passed on the 500m walk to the start, it wasn’t a difficult decision not to do the whole course. In fact, we’d only done two controls by the time Chritine came to relieve me and they then spent most of the time I was out playing in the stream on the way to the next control.

I ran the blue (the longest course on offer) taking just under 45 minutes for 7 km. It’s a lovely bit of forest to run in with nothing but beech leaves on much of the forest floor (although they did rather too good a job of hiding the marshes in places). I can’t claim a clean run with a bit of hunting for controls sunk in pits but it was enough to see off the competition. Most importantly though, it was a lovely day with blue skies and warm sunshine and everyone enjoyed their day out.