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After Ramshaw Rocks I spent the night at dad’s in Congleton and in the morning I found myself drawn to one of the area’s newer attractions: the Maize Maze in Davenport. There are three aims: first, to get from the entrance through the outer maze into the inner butterfly-shaped section; second, to get to the bridge in the middle; and third to get from there to the exit bridge. My first attempt to reach the butterfly was a failure; I found myself back at the start. Then, after a quick perusal of the map at the entrance, I’m glad to say I was able to orienteer quickly to the butterfly. Next, I soon found myself under the central bridge, but I thought of a strategy to get from there to the bridge and it worked. The hardest part was getting out. I made two logical decisions, one was correct, the other incorrect, but after a couple of revisits to the bridge I finally made my escape. About 70 minutes, which is a lot of minutes per kilometre! but good value for my fiver.
The Ultrasprint has a maze section, but maybe MDOC or POTOC could go one further and incorporate the Maize Maze into one of their events? It is, after all, just across the road from a mapped area: Brereton Heath Country Park.
Ramshaw Rocks are the east wing of the Roaches, a famous outcrop of millstone grit in the south-west Pennines near Leek. Some information about the history of orienteering in the area is given on the POTOC website. I think some people had a quiet chuckle when I announced I was going to this event – it’s a fantastic area for walking and rock climbing but it’s less than ideal for orienteering because the areas shown on the map as “rough open” are covered with Calluna vulgaris.
On the way back up the dogleg from control 11 I calculated the russness of the event at approximately 0.1R (degrees Russ), being the percentage chance of Russ bothering to finish the course. So low on the russometer, in fact, as to bearly register a flicker of russity. Only Russ himself could tell me if there has ever previously been an event so lacking in russocity. I await a russlessness report from the Bewdley headquarters of the International Russ Institute of Futile Dibberomatics. As I write, their scientists are… (Contd p. 94)
It was a beautiful evening in a beautiful area, only spoilt by the orienteering. I managed the 3.6 k of Blue part 1 in 45 minutes but, as I began to struggle to give my fig, the 2.7 k of Blue part 2 took me another 50 minutes. Included in that are the 20 seconds I halted right at the top to admire the panorama. A few of the runners seemed to be able to bounce through the heather as if they had pogo sticks for legs, but the rest of us had to content ourselves with any-which-way-but-straight (and the odd cheery comment).
Spot the difference:
leg 2 leg 9
Answer: To #2 I ran along the path, then across the heather. To #9 I ran down the path and along the road.
Thanks to a chance remark on the club forum a couple of months ago I’ve become involved in orienteering developments in the Black Country… I suggested that an initiative like MADO might not work so well in a place like Wolverhampton, Steve Nightingale said why not, I found out Graham Gristwood had been mapping in the city, I emailed him and the rest is…
Sue Cook from Wolverhampton council and Tony Callow from BOF have spent the last 18 months getting teachers trained and permanent courses planned, Graham Gristwood and Scott Fraser have mapped all the schools and parks, and now I’m wondering what the local clubs, HOC, WCH and WRE, could bring to the party (and take home in a doggy bag).
The one firm suggestion so far is that we organise a launch event in West Park in the autumn, and I’m now in the process of finding out who would be available to help.
I went to see Sue this afternoon. On the way to the meeting I popped into East Park, and afterwards West Park, where I met some of the rangers. They’ve got the control markers (unusually, as you can see, in a fetching shade of green) and are just waiting for the posts.
Haden Hill is on the A459 between Halesowen and Old Hill. A park that hasn’t been used for orienteering for many years because Sandwell Council built a golf course in the middle of it.
I knew nothing about the place and had low expectations, but it turned out to be a great little area. The ex-golf-course is quite challenging, and Peter Langmaid made good use of it. (Strictly speaking half of the controls were doglegs but they’re very difficult to avoid when trying to squeeze a 5 km course into 30 hectares!) The evening sunshine, the bowls match taking place next to the carpark, Haden Hill House… the only thing missing was the Pimms! 
I had three problems: 1. I couldn’t make out the very pale colouring for “rough open” on the map – I thought Alison must’ve redefined “forest”! 2. I lost a bit of time hunting for a few controls, especially #13 and #16. I had some trouble adjusting to the map scale. (I was interested to discover that the stream I had trouble locating #16 from is the River Stour, and formed the southern boundary of Staffordshire until 1966.) 3. Although the locals in the park were mostly just bemused (especially as those of us running Blue had to run past their football match five times!) a couple of them must’ve moved some of the control markers. 
Can you spot the pentagram?
A quiet time while we gear ourselves up for the new autumn season…
Sun 3rd WOA Croeso Welsh Festival of Orienteering till 9th
Wed 13th OD Daventry
Thu 14th HOC Redditch
Sun 17th POTOC Hanley
Thu 21st HOC Kidderminster
Sat 23rd White Rose Weekend Scarborough till 25th
Tue 26th WCH Cannock Chase – relay
Wed 27th STUWEB Wombourne 5k
Thu 28th HOC Sandwell Valley
Sat 30th SO Brighton – sprint
Sun 31st SO Brighton – relay
No local orienteering yesterday so I accepted David Williams’ and Robert Vickers’ kind offer of a lift down to Newbury for an ARDF event. I got off to a bad start when I set the alarm clock for 8 o’clock by mistake, so I had no time to make sandwiches and I also forgot my O shoes in the rush…
But otherwise the day went fine. When we arrived David and Robert showed me how to use the 2-metre yagi (which is the gizmo the guy’s carrying at the top of the Wikipedia page), which is simple in theory but difficult in practice. The aim is to find five transmitters hidden in the forest, each of which sends out a signal for one minute every five minutes. You can tell (vaguely) where each transmitter (or beacon, or “fox”) is by the strength of the signal and the direction you point your aerial. The start was the road junction in the middle of the map. I had two hours to find four of the foxes…
There was quite a strong signal from #4 from the SE, so I headed that way, also drawing arrows on the map to show where I thought the other signals were coming from. #1 and #2 seemed to be north of the start, so I left them for the end. Now, because the signal only returns every five minutes, I ran past #4. A bit confused, I ran NW up a spur in the middle of the area and got very good signals from #4 (E), #5 (S) and #3 (W). I headed due east and was 
to find #4 by a little pond. It’d taken me 40 minutes but I now knew I could do it. #5 was definitely somewhere near the wide ride further south, and it made it easier that four of the others were hunting for it at the same time. It turned out it was in the thick green stuff.
My plan for #3 was to run some way N up the ride and then take stock – Robert had the same idea and I was following him at this point. Maybe I shouldn’t have – I kept contact with him but I lost contact with the map! In the end I found #3 before he did, and even though I had no idea where I was!
I had 40 minutes left so I ran N until I arrived at the house which is on the site of Grimsbury Castle. Now I knew where I was again, I ran NE through the start and over the little hill to have a listen to #1 and #2. I wasn’t sure which was closer, but I’d made my mind up to try #1 so I went for it. Eventually I arrived on the path NE of the out-of-bounds area and got a strong signal NE in the trees. Running out of time, I couldn’t wait for the signal to come round again so I ran on the bearing and there it was!
After all that, it was disappointing to arrive back at the finish just outside the allowed time, but it wasn’t too shabby, was it. By the way, carrying the aerial and the map and a pen and a compass is a tricky business!
Next on the agenda was the foxoring using the 80-metre yagi. That’s the littler gizmo: the one the girl’s holding halfway down the Wikipedia page. This was more like orienteering. I had two hours to navigate to the control circles A-H shown on the map, and find the transmitter hidden at each location. This time practice was easier than theory; Robert explained what I had to do but when I got to circle A I couldn’t hear a thing! I wandered around for ten minutes before the penny dropped and I realised it was quite simple really.
Thereafter it was mainly about navigation and I succeeded in getting most of the way round without using the compass. Unfortunately I got most of the way to control I before I remembered I didn’t have to do that one, so I ended up getting 9 out of 8! An hour and half, making 3.5 hours altogether and I was shattered. The foxoring was fun but the real challenge was the long-distance direction finding, and I’m looking forward to trying it again. See you, aerial in hand, at Sutton Park?
(Nice photo sets from this year’s US championships)
btw, BKO held a national (normal O) event here in 2006.
This morning I enjoyably wasted an hour following the WOC Long races on TracTrac, which uses GPS to let us follow the runners through the forest. As with RouteGadget, now the races are over, there’s a “mass start” facility that lets you replay the race and see where people went ahead or fell back. Congratulations to Jamie Stevenson on his Top-10 finish (though as you can see from the splits, he was heading for 5th place until a costly error on leg 31) and to Daniel Hubmann who finally (and barnstormingly) got his hands on gold. Tomorrow is relay day.
Update: I had a feeling! Look at this! And even though I missed following it live, I got quite excited reading this! Now go and watch. (Click “replay” at the bottom.) O happy day!
Digisport photo
This week it was the turn of the elite runners in Olomouc, next week it’s the turn of Jack Q. and Jill T. Compassholder in Sälen as thousands of people head up to the Swedish mountains for the O-Ringen. If you want to have your mind boggled, take a look at the start lists! Good luck to all the Brits taking part, including a very impressive deputation from MADO.
I finally got down to Sandwell Valley to plan the courses for the SEE on 28 August. Well, I’d done some armchair planning months ago, but as you might expect I’ve had to revise a few of my ideas. Thanks to the wet summer it’s a jungle out there. Getting the runners off the paths (and getting them back alive!) is a real challenge, and the brambles are even starting to sprout across the paths.
The Valley was really quiet (oops, I forgot the M5!) and I had a great three hours before the rain set in. I still need to go back, and I’ll do it on a sunny day in the summer holidays, to get a better idea of where the action is. I must mention what a boon it is having such a great map, only recently updated by Alison Sloman.
Back to Clent for a Summer Evening Event. There was a very good turnout. I ran the long course, 5km, about 380m of climb. 77 minutes, which isn’t competitive (the best time was 45 minutes), but it was good training. I enjoyed Charlie Nelson’s course, which avoided most of the bracken (except for getting in and out of control 13) and took me on a lovely tour of a lovely area. The weather stayed fine too, which was quite a shock! I got a bit distracted on #2 and managed to run right past it, while on #6 and #8 I committed my usual sin of turning back just as I was about to spike the control…
The map we were using is dated 2005 and there did seem to be quite a few discrepancies. Areas change so fast, it’s quite a headache for the mappers!
While out on the course I ran into (not quite literally) Tamsin Mosse from the National Trust, who was visiting the event to find out what we’re up to. 
We run on several National Trust areas, and we have permanent courses on some of them too, so it’s important to have good relations. Apparently there’ll be an orienteering component at an NT event planned at Clent on the weekend of 16/17 August, but I can’t find a webpage about it to link to at the moment.
(Now that the results are up, I see I was lastish on my course but if I’d run the shorter course I’d've been in the top three…)
No run today – I had a christening to go to.
Last month the UK Cup Middle Distance event was held at Weston Heath in north Shropshire. It’s an interesting area and I ran there at POTOC‘s badge event on 16/2/03. I wasn’t doing much orienteering at the time so I didn’t register for a race, so I had to make do with a colour-coded course, and it must rank as one of the worst-value trips to an event that I’ve ever made. After driving 50 miles it was quite a disappointment to discover that the course had just six controls, and that I’d only be spending about three minutes of my run in the interesting part of the area.
Walking back to my car after the race I was surprised to hear Hungarian voices. (My wife is Hungarian.) If I remember correctly, it was a lady and her two sons, members of the Chester club.
Meanwhile, here’s a few photos from yesterday’s Ultrasprint in Sheffield.
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