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(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.

Veteran World Cup 1996

(The Veteran World Cup - now the World Masters - was held in Spain in 1996. Here is an extract from an O-Net article I wrote in April 1996.)

And to end with, a quote from Jorgen Martensson. It seems likely that he has managed the incredible double of being both World Champion and World Veteran Champion (H35) at the same time. Anyway, he was interviewed after he finished the first qualifying race, and asked if he had had any problems. He admitted that he had at first gone to the elite start. Then he remembered that he was running H35...

Pigsticking

(From an article I posted to the O-Net in December 1996.)

John gives me an ideal opportunity to provide a tribute to Willie Rushton, who died recently. His book "Pigsticking, A Joy for Life" provides brief details of how to participate in nearly every sport imaginable, and includes a section on orienteering. I quote:

"...I thought it consisted solely of sprinting cross-country through the Pilgrim's Progress with only a despondent A-Z of Slough to bring you solace, a sport designed for clean-living militant Christians.

Of night and light and the half light

I was in the LOK team that won the Harvester Trophy Relay in 1986, and this still counts as one of my best results ever. Here Peter Waldron reports on the event in Lokation 53. The title is taken from "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven " by W.B.Yeats, which ends with the perhaps better known line "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams".

A couple of dozen members of LOK stood expectantly at the finish of the Harvester Trophy overnight relay early on the morning of 14 September, eagerly awaiting Mark Chapman to appear from the forest and bring the first team home to win by at least the twenty-minute lead he had set out with on the last leg. Minutes passed without any sign of him, and restlessness grew, not helped by the commentator’s speculation as to Mark's whereabouts. At last, though, down the run-in he came: not, however the confident and triumphant figure we'd expected, but disconsolate-looking and hesitant, stopping to explain that there seemed to be a punch-mark missing from his control card. The next five minutes were harrowing in the extreme as the card was checked and Mark explained what had happened - during the last quarter of the course he'd noticed the missing punch and had run back several km to try to find out which one it was, but without success. To the extreme relief of the team, and not least Mark himself, the planner announced that the card was complete (two punches in a single box!) and LOK had won the Harvester!