Orienteering - club competition

For those outside the world of orienteering, the words Compass Sport Cup and Compass Sport Trophy don't mean much. They're inter club competitions for large and small clubs respectively. Yesterday was regional heat day. Regional heats have to be held outside regions of competing clubs, to lessen chance of unfair advantage by knowing mapped areas.

I know of at least 2 people with type 1 diabetes who competed yesterday. A young man from East Anglia ran at Sherwood Pines in Nottinghamshire, but sadly his club didn't get through to finals. I ran at Hamsterley Common in NE England, and my club will be competing at final in Lake District in October. The 2 others in the carshare contributed far more points than me, but it's a case of having people in all possible age / sex classes is the way to club success.

Please don't feel you have to compete in big competitions, unless you want to. People usually begin with small low key local events, and some never travel further to bigger events. There's always a choice of courses at each event. It's a sport where you compete at the level you feel comfortable.

Really interesting to hear how different your local club in France [a major orienteering nation] is to most local clubs in UK [a very minor orienteering nation]. What's also good to know is that many parks, forestry areas etc have permanent courses, so you can buy a map from a cafe or office, or sometimes download from internet before you head to park, and find posts any time the area is open to public. I helped to set up a permanent orienteering course at Wandlebury Country Park just outside Cambridge, for example. Search at http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/page/pocs

For orienteering chat, www.nopesport.com forum is the main UK based one. www.attackpoint.org mainly uses English language, but dominated by North Americans, with a few Australians, Britons and Kiwis, plus Scandinavians who often have better English than native speakers.

Not sure if I'll be at CSC final near Kendal in October - depends on my other commitments and if my club actually needs anoth to run in "Green Women" class. Heather at Hamsterley was horrible - except in rare cut patches, it was anything up to thigh high, hiding holes, tracks, rocks etc. I couldn't run much, and still rolled a few times. Sadly, for my very fast skilled pump using friend who competed at Sherwood Pines, SUFFOC didn't get through to final.
I haven't got any of my own children, but I've taken my nieces on their first orienteering experiences, plus lots of primary school aged children when I ran activity birthday parties at a country park near Cambridge. It was lovely to see transformation from up to 15 children, usually around 7 or 8 years old, who have never used maps before through a quick map walk, learning symbols as they followed paths and looked to varying types of woodland and open ground on either side, then head off to individual posts, then mini triangular or longer courses, and end with a quick score competition - first group to find 4 or 5 or 6 points, depending on how long we had left and relative appeal of running and birthday tea
In all the times I coached orienteering to children, I never lost a child, but occasionally adults went missing, because they didn't listen to tips. When I ran a series of sessions for mental health service users, the only people who had difficulty were staff. One middle aged lady with long term mental health issues, who took to orienteering like a duck to water told me that she hadn't done any map reading since she was a Guide in her teenage years. The smile on her face when she realised other people looked up to her skills was wonderful, as she hadn't had the chance to shine for a long time.

I will be in Lakes for part of Easter weekend, but not at JK - its pretty expensive for a single person to get accomodation, so I'm camping a couple of nights with a group of friends in Langdale.