Two months ago Helen decided to organise a Fleetville Junior School team for the British Schools Orienteering Championships. Since then they have been to events in places like Epping Forest, Verulamium, Rothamsted and High Wycombe, as well as having a coaching day in Highfield Park during half term.

Yesterday the team of 16 put in a fantastic performance and came away with three medals: third school in Girls Year 5, second school in Boys Year 6, and third place in the overall Primary Schools competition.

Some more photos here.

I'm controlling the City of London Orienteering Race in October. The picture on the left shows some of the things I ran past when checking control sites.

It's going to be a great race. Don't miss it.

(Reflections on Day 3 of the Scottish 6-Day 1991 reproduced from Lokation 79. I believe it's normal to apologise to Wordsworth at this point.) 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

Upon a distant Scottish hill,

When all at once I saw a crowd,
Not one of them was standing still,
Beyond the lake, above the trees,
And there amongst them Helen Teece.

Continuous as the stars that shine,
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line,
But only eight from LOK,
I gave the map a hopeful glance,
I'm in the circle now perchance.

The pack ran left, and then ran right,
And up and down, and to and fro,
But number five was out of sight,
Full fifty metres down below,
And then it struck me clear as day,
I'm off the map by half a k.

For oft when on my couch I lie,
And contemplate this sport of O,
I wonder how I passed five by,
And why didn't Ian or Tim or Ro,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And least I didn't count Bowhill.

(From Lokation 108 in December 1996.)

Honeymoon day one, and a chance to test the large sports bags that LOK gave us as a wedding present. (Thanks to everyone who contributed: we decided we'd leave the wine at home, which just about gave us room for O-kit for two weeks.) The flight to Boston passed slowly enough for me to plan most of the Holmbury badge event, and we managed to get about one hundred miles north before finding a motel.

Day two was a day for culture. We stopped at Fort Ticonderoga to discover how the Americans had whopped the Brits during the War of Independence. Then on north west into the Adirondack mountains, and a visit to Lake Placid. We did the tour of the Olympic ski jumping complex, complete with lunatic people out dry slope ski jumping. The highlight of Helen's trip came when she spotted that Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards was one of the people training with the American team. We have a blurred photo of the back of his head to prove it. And then the final drive into Canada, through Ottawa and on to Wakefield, about twenty miles north of the capital.  We arrived at the event centre just in time to miss the opening ceremony.

(An attempt to be helpful from the O-Net in October 1995.)

> I would like to know the best English word describing the
> distance between two controls in an o-course.
> In Norwegian this word is called 'strekk', and some English
> suggestions are route, lap, leg, stretch and trek...
> I hope anyone can tell me the right word to use.
>
>
> Thanks for any replies!
>
> Oystein Bjorke
>

(Some thoughts on early attempts at low-cost colour map reproduction from an article I wrote on the O-Net in November 1995. We have come an awfully long way since then.)

Here are some thoughts on colour photocopies based on my experience so far in Great Britain.

1) Firstly a quote from the results of National Event 6 in 1993, run by South Wales Orienteering Club on Merthyr Common, a moorland area in South Wales:

"Competitors using the 1:10,000 map were in fact using colour enlarged photocopies of the 1:15,000 map. We are not aware that this has ever been done before but it seems to give satisfactory results. However, it has been brought to our notice that, under the stress of constant folding, the ink, especially the black, tends to flake off (in the same way as has recently been experienced with some ordinarily printed maps). This method saved the cost of having maps printed at all at 1:10,000, it saved the overprinting costs at 1:10,000, it saved the photocopying costs of the description sheets and the labour of gluing them on! It also looks as if it may have saved the event from going into debt." Neil Grant and Nick Kingsford, Planners, NE6

(From an O-Net article I wrote in November 1995.) 

Anyway, here are a couple of moments from LOK folk-lore. I promise you they are both true (he would say that wouldn't he)

1) The British Championships for 1990 were held near Sheffield, about 250km north of London. A certain person drove to the event, and arrived to find there were no signs up. He then realised he had come one week too early. He drove home, and then went back the following week. The mistake on its own is bad enough, but we never understood why he told anyone about it.

2) The area around Bordeaux in France is known for its sand dune areas on the Atlantic coast. At one event the cartographer had got a bit carried away, and drew a blue border all around the mapped area. A certain LOK orienteer got a little lost and decided to relocate by running until he hit the "sea" at the edge of the map. Unfortunately he decided to set off east. The first sea you come to by running east from Bordeaux is the Adriatic, after about 1000km.