Springing into Orienteering: Why you should check out our Club's Spring Series events!

Lincoln Orienteering Group (LOG)

Written by Anna Koskela-Brook

Our Spring Series includes six events this year. They're run every Thursday evening from the beginning of April till 8 May. So far, there have been around 30 people running in each event. You don't need to be a member of the club or have tried orienteering before entering our Spring Series! The Short course is suitable for complete beginners, and we can offer advice at the start if needed. 

You can choose your own pace in orienteering, so you might want to slow down on your first couple of events and get used to reading a map whilst walking/running. Even the more experienced orienteers make mistakes, so don’t worry if your run doesn’t go as planned. You can get a lot out of orienteering, and there are many different reasons to enjoy it, so I hope that you’ll find yours! Get in touch with us beforehand if you have any questions, and we can help get you started. 

We offer three different courses in each event: Short, Long and Technical, so there is something for everyone. Those who are new to orienteering often go for the Short course, which is a good way of practising map reading without having to cover a long distance. The Technical provides a more challenging course for the experienced orienteers, and the course type is only revealed at the start of each event. This could be, for example, an odds and evens score event or a corridor exercise. The Long course attracts a variety of people and is a good way of getting some exercise without the challenge of the Technical one.

There is also an additional competitive element to our Spring Series, which encourages people to attend all the events. Points will be awarded from your best four events towards a series award for each course. 

We try to vary the locations we use every year, and this year we have two events near Lincoln city centre, and the rest of them are elsewhere in the county. Most of the events offer a mixed terrain of open parkland and fields with forest sections included as well.

Our Spring Series events are nice social evenings, and the club members help collect the kites after the events, which can lead to them becoming interested in planning and getting involved with other club activities.  

All the events in this series are in areas that we have used for our events previously, so we already had the maps ready for each area. We have a Fixtures Secretary in our committee who contacts the landowners for the access permissions. The planners are also LOG members who have volunteered to plan the courses for each event and to get them ready on the day. 

This year’s Spring Series planners are Ben Cluderay, Steve Bones, Kevin Rice, Paul Murgatroyd, Jeff Baker, and Amanda Roberts. 

The mappers are Richard Parkin, Stephen Bones/Paul Murgatroyd, and Jeff Baker/David Olivant.

All of our events are published on our website logonline.org.uk, and we also advertise them through our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky. All the information is also emailed to the club members. We publish the series format and the event locations and dates before the start of the series, and then remind people to complete their entries leading up to each event.

Upcoming events:

• Bourne Woods (1 May 2025)
• South Common (8 May 2025)

I personally like orienteering in spring as the weather isn’t usually too warm yet but the scenery is already looking beautiful after the grey winter months! 

Find out more about LOG's Spring Series and their other upcoming events via this link. 

St. Andrew's Glasgow Orienteering Club (STAG)

Written by Terry O'Brien

In 2025 our Spring Series consists of 5 Evening events held fortnightly from 9 April on Wednesdays.

Event 1 attracted 28 entries with 27 turning up. We encourage people to enter via a Google Form by 12 Noon on the Friday before each event. + 3 STAG Officials. We expect attendance will average around 30.

One of the highlights of the Spring Series is that we manage to attract members from other Clubs. Recent events have seen members from AYROC, CLYDE, ELO and ESOC joining the fun!

The Spring Series events are open to all, however fees do depend on your level of membership. For example BOF Seniors will pay £5, whereas non BOF members pay £6. Students and Junior pay £2, however STAG students and Juniors go free as the fees are covered by Club funds. 

There are 3 courses Short (Yellow/Orange), Medium and Long, as technically difficult as the area allows with Medium around 2/3rds length of Long. We offer challenging courses, up to date maps, printed on water-resistant paper, loose CDs available online, and are within reach of Glasgow (after work). Full SI reinstated this Series.

Here are the upcoming events in the series:

• Wed 7 May 2025 Cathkin Braes CP
• Wed 21 May 2025 Drumpellier CP
• Wed 4 Jun 2025 Bellahouston Park

For each event we now require a core team of 3 - to carry out admin on the evening; planner and controller to work in tandem on all aspects. This series has 13 different members involved, and a few others do help bring in controls.

Courses are pre-viewed and checked by either myself or Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg, currently our fully qualified BOF Controllers.

Find out more about STAG's Spring Series via their website. 

Newcastle & Tyneside Orienteers (NATO)

Written by Mary Rack

The best thing about orienteering in spring is that the areas are often looking at their best, people are looking to take up something new and it is warm enough to hang around and chat to people before and after the event!

Our spring series is one of three series each year and includes four events, 3 in country parks, one in a quite urban area. Around 30 competitors in each.  The events usually attract a number of families.

Club members enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of these events. Newcomers enjoy them because there are easy courses, no need for equipment, there is no need to preorder, and there is advice on orienteering for those who want it.

Anyone can take part, everyone uses a club dibber.  It is advertised as a low-key series suitable for newcomers and families.

The club has a designated person who arranges permissions.  Permissions are given by the councils (Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside).

There are still a couple of events left in this year's Series:

• Spring Local Series 2025: Seaton Sluice (10 May 2025)
• Spring Local Series 2025: Bedlington Gallagher Park (28 June 2025)

Events are planned by members of the club. Members new to planning feel confident enough to plan these events because of their low-key nature. They are advertised on our website.

Find out more about NATO and their upcoming events via this link. 

West Cumberland Orienteering Club (WCOC)

Written by Jamie Rennie

Spring is the perfect time to orienteer! We are all relieved to put away our head torches after the winter series and orienteer in the daylight. The fells look fantastic and we don't have the high bracken, which makes some areas unpleasant in the summer. Every time we orienteer on a Thursday with WCOC, we can't believe how lucky we are to run around these lovely areas.

Anyone can try our Spring Series events. We always have an Easy course, and you can just turn up on the day for this course, and we always have dibbers for hire. We recently added a Red course at one of our events - this is a longer easy course perfect for adult runners. The plan is to have a few more of these, as they are great for beginners who can run a bit further. We encourage you to come and try the Easy course!

Our events take place in a wide variety of areas - sprints in local towns and parks, plus lots of local fells, forests and some seaside areas with dunes. Each area has its own mapper, who maintains the map and keeps it up to date. We also have access officers who look after groups of areas - they maintain friendly relationships with local land owners eg National Trust or local farmers. The fixtures secretary, with the support of the committee, decide where to hold the events of a series - then the call goes out to the membership asking for planners.

We advertise the events on our website and social media. We have a weekly membership newsletter and also send out emails after each event with links to results and next week's event.  

WCOC aims to put on events every Thursday evening. We have the odd gap, eg, pre-JK and sometimes between series, but we must be one of the most active clubs in the country for the number of weekly events we put on.

This Spring, we started with the Rocket League - a series of sprint events around local towns such as Cockermouth and Keswick. We had 4 events starting in March as soon as the Night Series had finished (and will have 9 more later in the year). We had a record 130 entries at our Keswick sprint event, including a good number from the local running club, Keswick AC. It was great to see local fell runners pitch their wits against the orienteers.

Following this, we moved to our traditional Spring series - 10 events on fell or in forest. We have some great local areas, which includes techy terrain in Borrowdale to local fells. Numbers have been very good for these recently, with typical numbers being over 80.

Upcoming events left in the Sprint Series:

• Holme Wood, Loweswater (1 May 2025)
• Bleaberry Fell (8 May 2025)
• High Rigg (15 May 2025)
• Hen Combe & Mellbreak (22 May 2025)
• High and Low Hows Borrowdale (29 May 2025)
• Ling Fell (5 June 2025)
• Whinlatter Fell (12 June 2025)

Having weekly events means that Thursdays is the evening for orienteering. Lots of our members come every week and rarely miss events. We have been promoting our events more on social media, and have been using an app called Canva to design more interesting social media posts. We have good connections with Keswick AC running club, who have helped us promote our events among members. Fell Runners often want to improve their navigation skills so coming to our events is an ideal way to get on the fells and practice your skills. We have new Club Development Officers (Father and Son team Jamie and Charlie Rennie) - one of their targets is to increase membership with the under 40 age group, links with local running clubs is a way for them to achieve this, so what works well with Keswick AC will be tried with other local clubs too. 

Find out more about West Cumberland Orienteering Club's Spring Series and other events via their website.