Month: March 2009

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Compass Trophy Orienteering

Harry, Fred and I represented our orienteering club, Claro, in the Compass Sport Cup (an inter-club) competition held at Bramham Park. Harry and Fred had been selected to run Orange and me Brown. This was Fred’s first solo attempt at an Orange and my first attempt at a Brown.

Official results here.

We all had a great time in beautiful weather in lovely woods. Harry did really well coming 8th out of 49 in a time of 24:56. The winner came in at 19:43 but him and the runner up are both in the England squad! He also scored maximum points on the orange course for Claro.

Fred did fantastically; there is a significant step up in difficulty between White / Yellow and Orange – the controls are much better hidden and the navigation between them isn’t solely on paths. He had a bit of a mare on control 5 (funnily enough this was the same as my control 7 which I properly messed up) taking more than 40 minutes, but he still secured 76 points for the club and now there is no looking back to the easier courses.

I had a great run and felt strong. Mucked up 3 controls with either navigational or route planning errors which cost me nearly all my time against the leaders. Still a good 100 mins of training, plenty of bramble scratches, my first brown under my belt and another few lessons learned.

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BD Family Walk: Pen y Gent

 We set off from Horton in Ribblesdale at about 11am stopping off at the Trading Post on the High Street to get chocolate for everybody. A quick chat, handing out of the maps to each of the boys along with Mars bar and we were off!

pen-y-ghent-15309As we left the road to start the ascent, we saw a big bird of prey on the wall a few feet from us and as we were admiring it, the falconer walked up with entourage; he informed us that it was a Chilean Eagle – certainly a long way from home.

We started to head up hill and Ralph soon got into it and striding ahead – he liked the bits of scrambling up the little crags (well thats what they seem like when you are 6!), but we soon realised that there was more to it than that. He was literally running and we gleaned that he wanted to be the first to the top!

A brief breather at the double ladder stile where you join the Pennine Way and start heading North up the steep bit. Ralph soon decided that enough was enough and set off, so the rest of us quickly packed up our bags, took over the additional layers we had donned and chased after him. A scramble up this steep section and we had the summit in sight.

pen-y-ghent-15309-profile

Ralph’s legs were now starting to feel the strain but he perserved and was the first of us there!

Sitting in the shelter of the wall, we sat down for a well deserved lunch and the Jet Boil was put on for a round of hot chocolate.

Suitably rested, we set off down hill back towards Horton. Once we lost a bit of height the wind wasn’t as strong and Iris was let off the lead and did lots of bounding.

 The rest of the walk provided some great views looking back at Pen-y-Ghent.

All in all, a great walk (~9km and 680m of ascent) with fab weather (felt like the first day of Spring this year) and a fantastic effort from all the boys! Enjoyed fish and chips on the way home ready for swimming lessons.

ps oh yes something about carrying rocks!

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Night Orienteering

Saturday night saw Harry and I go night orienteering with my friend Dave and one of his son’s Ben. It was an Ebor Orienteers event at Bishopwood South near Selby.

Harry and Ben decided to do the Short course together and Dave and I opted for the Long – it was only 4km after all! I had borrowed one of the Claro head lamps and this was brilliant compared to the use of headlamps on previous night O excursions (Swinsty and Saltaire – both paired up with H).

bishop-wood-south-long-night-oSet off at quite a fast but comfortable pace, but quickly started making a mess of things and faffed around trying to find control 3, then continued in this vein until control 7, where I realised I wasn’t using my head. Until that point, my nav between controls was generally based on taking a simple bearing and running along it, but at night it is much harder to guage the distance you have travelled. From control 7 onwards my nav was much smarter eg, taking a bearing to a point on a stream one side or other from the control (rather than right at it) so that I knew precisely which direction I needed to travel up the stream once I hit it. As a consequence the result splits show that I was much more competitive in the second half, but ended up 24th out of 30 in 1:02.43, 28.27 behind the winner (but Zac is in the England squad!); not my best, but a good lesson learned.

The other thing was that the woods, despite being flat, were fairly densly covered in brambles. As a result, my legs are absolutely covered in scratchs!

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Harry and Ben did well, unfortunately the Short course was a bit too short and fairly simple (equivalent to a Yellow) and all on paths. H finished 3rd out of 9 in 17.54, 1.17 behind the winner.