AIRE take part in Olympic Torch Celebrations

Back in January AIRE were contacted by Skipton Town Council/Craven District Council as they were proposing to hold a Festival of Sport & Culture to coincide with the Torch Relay going through Skipton.

There were a large number of local sports clubs & societies involved, many putting on displays and/or activities as well as having "stalls".

We had a "stall" with introductory information about orienteering (the Sport for all leaflet) and displayed some maps of our local POCs and examples of courses from events held on our local areas (from easy beginners courses to longer and more technical courses for experienced orienteers).

I also devised a short (1km) and simple introductory urban orienteering course using a section of the pre-existing Skipton Urban map that surrounded the High Street where the events were taking place. This was purely to allow people to be introduced to this facet of our sport. It was not timed so there was no pressure on "participants", merely an introduction for them to undertake at their leisure. Those that returned were given an "Airienteers" metal badge.

Those that took up the challenge seemed to enjoy themselves and we received some good feedback.

Some of the displays/activities other clubs put on had more of an immediate visual impact so we may have suffered as our activity was not immediately obvious. That said I think we portrayed our sport in a positive light.

This was the first time the club had done anything like this so if we were to do something like this again I think having something with a bigger visual impact to attract people would be beneficial. Perhaps a mini maze if space permitted.

The photo below (Credit: Lawrie Phipps) shows Nick explaining the joys of orienteering to the Lord Mayor of Skipton.

Nicholas Jones, Aire

Item posted by Caroline Povey