Bath University Mountaineering Club host their first orienteering event

14 October 2025

Earlier this month, Bath University Mountaineering Club (BUMC) held their first orienteering event at Warmley and Siston Common. Hear from those at BUMC who organised the event, which included 7 courses for 150 attendees!

Katie, you were the planner for this event, how did you find this role?

I had only ever planned a local SBOC event with about 30 participants so planning 7 courses for over 150 people was a little bit daunting at first. Once we finally had an agreed location for the event, I started “armchair” planning my routes. There were 2 main limitations: every control needed to be grippled due to the semi-urban nature of the location, and courses could not cross fast roads due to the number of juniors participants. I’m an engineer so to be honest I tackled it like any other project - I set out rough courses, seeked feedback from my BOK mentor (thank you Chris Johnson!), made improvements, and then kept iterating until I was satisfied with my courses. There were many hiccups along the way, specifically discovering that the map was quite outdated, but luckily John Simmons (BOK) stepped in to remap the area. It was a pleasure to have so many orienteers praise their courses when they came back in from their runs and everything ran smoothly on the day.

And Alexandra, how did you find the organising?

This was my first time organising an event and I learnt so much about the process, especially about how much work goes into making sure that an orienteering event is run smoothly. My role began over summer with the BOK permissions team obtaining permissions for the event. We went through a few options before landing on Warmley and Siston Common, a parkland area near Bristol with some urban areas and the occasional technical area. The majority of my role was closer to the time of the event where I had to send out emails to the groups of BOK volunteers that would be helping us on the day so that they knew what their roles were. On the day of the event, we had an early start to put out some controls and then I was making sure that everything was ready for the first starts to happen at 10:30am.

Orienteering at BUMC

Orienteering is one of the three sports within BUMC alongside walking and climbing. Having the other sports alongside us is so beneficial as everyone enjoys the outside and often has a go at each other's sports, expanding people’s understanding and experience of different activities. We have weekly training on or near our university campus when we are not off at competitions. This event was a local event with around 150 people attending and we had a record number of BUMC orienteers competing, including many people who had never tried orienteering before.

We have lots of trips planned for this year including the SBOC training weekend in November which will be the first orienteering training trip at BUMC. We are expanding orienteering at Bath and it's only up from here!

Top tips for anyone who may be planning/organising their first event

Planning

I would definitely say little and often is the best way forward when juggling a full-time job alongside planning! I also learnt the hard way that maps are not always reflective of the current state of the area so I would prioritise getting to visit the area early on in the planning process. Unfortunately, I was on placement over my summer and living over an hour away, so this was not possible but would’ve saved me a lot of trouble. If controls need to be grippled, I would also make sure that you visit every single control site as it is impressive how many amazing control sites, even as simple as cycle path junctions on White and Yellow courses, have absolutely nothing to gripple too which has to be taken into consideration.

Organising

Having good communication with the planner of the course is ideal so that you are on the same page throughout the process and on the day. The only other advice I really have is to not underestimate the amount of work it takes to plan an event (I definitely underestimated it myself!); this event made me further appreciate all of the hard work of the volunteers that make orienteering possible. However, with all the work required to organise an event, it made it all the more of an accomplishment for the event to run successfully and I gained so many priceless skills through this process.

Thank you to all the volunteers and members of BOK who helped in the run up to the event and on the day. Also thank you to South Gloucestershire council for the use of the area and to the King’s Oak Academy for the use of your school as our assembly.