Orienteering involves finding your way quickly between cunningly hidden “controls” – at points that are clearly marked on your map. It requires a fine balance of speed and navigation. Well that’s the theory and a Thursday night taster session was kindly arranged for us in Macc Forest.
Maps were handed out at Standing Stone car park and the important features were pointed out. There was much talk of “runnable” and “non-runnable forest” and I noticed that the real orienteers were kitted out with bramble proof leggings. I’ve got a famously bad sense of direction and I should have paid more attention.
Enthused we all bounded off towards the first control easily located between the side of the path and a pond. At this point just following everyone else looked like a good tactic – relief! But sooner or later we all found out that there was often more than one control and you had to match the code on your map sheet. Inevitably your own control was always much harder to find involving much scrambling around in the woods.
Number 8 was a bugger and I watched the rest of the field disappear as I scratched around in ditches and behind old walls.
Finally locating the evil “8-2K” I decided to cut a corner through “runnable forest”. Suddenly alone hopping over the brambles I contemplated that Macclesfield Forest was really quite big and dark and what happened if you got lost in here? Back on the tracks I saw runners heading in all directions. I stuck to the paths and concentrated on holding the map the right way up – surprisingly difficult when you are used to rather switching off after a few k.
Despite the whole course apparently being only around 4 miles as the orienteer runs I guess that most of us covered at least 6 miles running backwards and forwards trying to uncover that elusive control hidden in or under a “re-entrant”. It was hard going up the steep hills and by the time the last runners staggered out of the forest darkness was falling.
We took a well earned short recovery in a local pub and all agreed that it had been both a challenge and great fun. Ian Smallwood seemed to have won by a mile and, confessing some past experience, he explained the mysteries of control 8 and “re-entrants” (apparently a diminutive valley). Paul Ayres meanwhile described getting completely lost and at one point being overtaken by the organiser who was out retrieving his controls.
Rob