AIRE and CLARO look forward to seeing you all at the British Middle Championships this coming weekend. 

You have entered in greater numbers than we anticipated, but we have adapted to cater for you all as best we can.  Both Danefield and Kilnsey Moor is a lovely places in the Spring sunshine and we really hope the weather is kind so that you can enjoy it at its best.  The technical woodland of Danefield is in sharp contrast to the fast open areas of Kilnsey.  You should enjoy some great orienteering on both days.  Str8 compasses is sponsoring a lot of prizes for the Northern Championships and the British Middles so run well and good luck.

Start times and final details are published, maps are printed and lots of equipment is ready to move.  No controls are out yet, but we have been busy at Kilnsey as you may be able to see from a picture.  There are a variety of crossing points on Kilnsey Moor – many of you will only encounter this one.  There are no stiles to cross at Danefield you’ll be relieved to know.

We will be able to accommodate you all in the parking areas for both events, but as always, it would help if you car shared as much as possible.  The Danefield field has remained in good condition throughout the winter, but as some rain has been forecast over the coming days we will have some tracking available.  Kilnsey has the delight of hard standing in the quarry.  We can’t promise that you will keep your feet dry, but at least cars should not get stuck in the mud as might have happened at some recent events.  We’re hoping that’s true for Danefield.  Definitely true for Kilnsey!

Anyone wanting to carry a club tent to Danefield, could reduce the distance to carry the tent by 800m by using the drop off point suggested in the event details.  It would need to be a rapid drop-off as there are often no parking bays available. They are all quite uneven, and the road is very narrow.  To get back to the parking field it is best to not attempt a 5 point turn but to drive in an anti-clockwise route with LH turns for 2.5k to get back to the parking field.  This should take no morfme than 5 minutes.

Have a great weekend.

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Full details on the British Middle Championships are available via this link. Visit the CLARO website for more details regarding the Northern Championships. Good luck to everyone taking part!

As agreed at the AGM 2023, from 1 May 2024 British Orienteering would like to offer an exclusive part-year Membership to new members.

New members are individuals who have not been members of British Orienteering in any of the previous four calendar years.

Part year membership fees 2024

Seniors – £10

Young adults – £7.50

Juniors – £3.00

Families – £25.00 (all members must be new members and not on the database to take up this offer).

No memberships will be merged with existing memberships.

Please note from 1 January 2025, any “new” members will need to renew their membership for 2025.

Find out more about how to join online today. 

The GBR teams for the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) and the European Youth Orienteering Championships (EYOC) are announced.

The JWOC races are in Plzeň, Czechia from 1 - 6 July and the EYOC races are in Szczecin, Poland from 21 - 24 June.

All named athletes are selected to all disciplines at each competition.

In alphabetical order of surname, the JWOC team is:

Non-travelling reserves: Adam Barrie and Emma Crawford

In alphabetical order of surname, the EYOC team is:

Report by Amy Curtis member of Bristol Orienteering Klub

During the summer, Bristol Orienteering Klub (BOK) organised a very successful series of Junior Sprint Virtual Orienteering Courses using mobile phone technology.

History will doubtless remember 2020 for the onset of the Corona virus pandemic: in the Orienteering World, we will remember it as a time where our experience of orienteering changed and widened.

For a while, there was no orienteering at all but then members started using their local Permanent Orienteering Courses (POCs) or their old kept maps of local areas to challenge themselves, but this wasn’t quite enough and so it quickly developed from a ripple to a typhoon of activity throughout BOK members. 

One of our BOK members, Scott Bailey started using and sharing the Norwegian GPS virtual orienteering App “UsynligO” (Norwegian for invisible orienteering) which was already very widespread and well used in Scandinavia and which BOK embraced. He presented a webinar with British Orienteering on Virtual Orienteering using the UsynligO App which was well watched and as a result the App has also been taken up by some other clubs.

With many members taking new-found time during lockdown to map new areas and update older maps, we were able to use our library of georeferenced maps to rapidly produce a plethora of virtual events. We now have a very large mapping team with highly developed skills in digital mapping technology and many members surprised at their new-found ability to not only download a mobile phone App, but also to successfully navigate the App and even enjoy its technology!

At least 29 different virtual orienteering events were made available over the lockdown period – generally one a week, and it has proved an effective and safe way to maintain orienteering training, skills, races and series/leagues.

Accurate figures are not available for the Virtual Orienteering Courses (VOCs), which have continued throughout the summer months. However, we know that participation exceeded 300 runs by late July and is now probably considerably greater.

By the beginning of the school summer holidays, there were enough local areas mapped to the correct specification to add them to UsynligO that Jamie Hayward who leads BOK Juniors set up a brand-new, local challenge, open to any juniors (and seniors!) in the area.