The White Rose Weekend took place from 22-25 August 2025 at Dalby. Josh Cooper provides an overview of the weekend in this blog.
Tell us more about yourselves and how you became involved in coordinating this year’s event.
I’m Josh Cooper, the 2025 White Rose Weekend Co-ordinator. I’ve been involved as a helper at the White Rose for the past 23 years, and over the last 10 or so years, I’ve been on the organisation team. In those years, I’ve sorted out the layout of the camping field and ensured all the required equipment got to the camping field, start, and finish for each event. I’ve also been the volunteer coordinator, assigning roles and providing details to all helpers. This gave me a good understanding of the event organisation, and it was natural to move into the coordinator role for this year. Steve Corrigan has been on the White Rose organising team for far longer and kindly supported me as I stepped into the Co-ordinator role.
For this year, like in 2023, the White Rose has been a joint venture between Eborienteers and Cleveland Orienteering Klub. Organising the event with members of both clubs reduces the strain on members of EBOR, but it can make coordination and communication between the whole team even more critical.
This year the event was located in Dalby Forest, tell us more about securing permissions for the venue and why this was such a good choice for the event.
The White Rose is known for having all events being accessible from the camping field. This limits the available locations we have, but Dalby Forest is a great venue for this, due to the size of the forest it is suitable for staging multiple events. Permissions were secured early on in the year by the EBOR Permissions Officer and we have worked closely with Forestry England to meet all the conditions they set. Dalby has over 600 historic monuments, which the planners needed to consider for control placement and routes.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the event this year – did you do anything special to honour the occasion?
Strangely – no! In 2022 we celebrated 50 years of the White Rose, with various merchandise available for competitors. Podium prizes at the White Rose are mugs, so this year we have a special 50th event mug design, drawn by EBOR’s Steve Whitehead.
The event
All results are available on the EBOR and CLOK websites. https://eborienteers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/index_classic-and-middle.html
On Friday, we had the 30-minute Night Score event. With a start time of 9 pm, it was dark in the forest, making navigation challenging. Courses were planned to TD4 standard, so all controls were as accessible as possible, and there was less disadvantage to being first through any undergrowth. A few competitors visited all 30 controls, but none did it in the time limit, so everyone had to think strategically. Notable results were:
- Finlay Mackie M12 of SYO (pictured), visiting 23 controls, as many as any M14 & M16’s and winning the M12- class in the process
- Josh Cooper being closest to the time limit, punching after 29:59, taking 3rd in M18-35
- SO taking a 1/2/3 clean sweep of W65/70 (pictured below)
Images below: Johny Booker.
For Saturday’s Middle distance and Sunday’s Classic distance events, the times are combined to give an overall winner. Notable results were:
- Fred Garratt of SYO, winning a hotly contested M10A class, with 5 minutes separating the top 5
- Oli Johnson of SYO and Lucie Todhunter of SROC (pictured), both winning the 21L classes as M/W45’s
- Mark Chapman of SYO (pictured) winning the biggest age class, the 24-strong field of M60L
- Mark Glaisher of SAX and Richard Llewellyn of NOC, turning 6th and 5th respectively into 2nd and 3rd overall on M70L
- Ted McDonald of BOK, taking a solid win in the 4-strong field of M80L
- Emma Chan of EBOR, taking 3rd place in W10B away from Rhiannon Pinches of ERYRI by just 6 seconds
- Masie Todhunter of SROC, making up for 7th on the Middle to take the overall win on W14A
- Helen Gardner of EBOR, winning W75 by 95 minutes
Images below: Johny Booker.
We also award the Yorkshire Water Trophy to the best 3-member family team across the two days. This year it was won by the Chapman family of SO, with Ben 1st, Emma 1st and Anna 2nd.
Image below: Yorkshire Water Trophy winners. Credit: Johny Booker.
On Saturday and Sunday we also had the Maze, Hill Race and Pace & Bearing competitions. Younger competitors loved Steve Whitehead’s maze, which this year was shaped to look like the White Rose 50th edition mug design. The fastest competitors and those who did all 8 courses were awarded with prizes.
Image below: Steve Whitehead and tents landscape. Credit: Josh Cooper.
Two competitors had identical times in the Hill Race, so were forced into a head-to-head race to decide a winner. The spectators were thrilled with this outcome and cheered as Andrew Llewellyn of FVO came out on top, adding to his win in M35L.
Image below: Hill race head-to-head. Credit: Steve Whitehead.
The Pace and Bearing competition is a real leveller, with pace no longer a factor. Again there were crowds, discussing people’s techniques in the competition. Amanda Crawshaw of SYO was the closest to the marker, despite a claim that she’d “never paced in her life!”
Monday’s sprint event was a good round-up to the weekend, for competitors to expend any final energy they had left. The forest was runnable and had good visibility, with a 1:5000 map forcing quick decisions.
- Ben Chapman of SO won M14-16, ahead of Seb Blackmore of HOC, holding a 3-second advantage over Samuel Crook of AIRE in third
- The W21’s held out against the older competitors in W18-35, with Rebecca Ward of SHUOC pipping Alice Rigby of CLOK and Anna Drinkwater of ERYRI
- Lucy Needham of AIRE finished third in W40-50, only one second ahead of Anna Chapman of SO
What were the highlights from the event for you?
While I greatly enjoyed being acknowledged and thanked by the team for the work we had done before and during the weekend, it was even more joyous to see everyone smiling and enjoying the weekend themselves. Such a friendly community was generated within the assembly field, and it was a real highlight to see over 100 adults and children join for the BBQ on Sunday evening, to wind down after a busy 3 days.
Images below: BBQ time for attendees. Credit: Steve Whitehead.
Is there anyone in particular you want to thank in conjunction with organising the weekend?
There are so many people who helped make the weekend such a success, so thank you to all the volunteers who gave up their time. The White Rose organising team did an amazing job this year, so I would like to extend an extra thank you to each of them for their hard work. Everyone in the team was awarded with a framed map from the weekend.
Images below: Podium place! Shots captured by Johny Booker.
We were welcomed and supported by Mark & Suzanne at Ebberston Common Farm, which increased the possibilities when planning courses and routes to the starts. The North Yorkshire Scouts Events Group provided equipment for yet another year, bringing the marquee, tables and water bowser exactly where we needed them. We were also supported by Tim at Podium Catering and Romualdas at Compasspoint, both managing to serve customers with smaller teams than usual.
Images below: CompassSport and Podium setup. Credit: Josh Cooper. Marquee set up. Credit: Steve Whitehead.
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