Report by Richard Gamble, Sporting Clubs Coordinator (Northern Ireland)

After engaging in the recent British Orienteering Webinars, six members of Northern Ireland Orienteering Association (NIOA) formed a MapRun working group. This is a cross club initiative covering the whole of NI. In the month of June they were busy familiarising themselves with the app, testing it out in different areas and terrain. Meeting once a week, they discussed what they had done and learned and sharing courses with each other to check.

Lots of work has also been done on georeferencing our maps.

On top of this NIOA has offered a grant for work on adding contours to OpenOrienteeringMap, which do not appear on NI maps, unlike the rest of the UK.

On Friday 12 June NI was at the stage were ten people could meet outdoors, so the next weekend the group set out four MapRunF courses and invited members to trial them and feedback on their experience. The feedback was very positive, the app worked really well and it was lovely to see people running with a map in their hand again.

Photo collage shows happy orienteers socially distancing within family groups.