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.

_________________________________________________________________

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 Alan Rosen who has been a member of Happy Herts since 1969

The club was founded in 1968 by a handful of orienteers in a part of the country which was not and is not well-endowed with lots of high-quality forests, and it would not have been surprising if Happy Herts (HH) had gone the way of so many of the earliest clubs which folded or merged within a few years of starting up – we are slightly amused to be the longest-lasting alliteratively-named orienteering club in the country!

As with other clubs, our history is punctuated by the events we’ve organised and the events we’ve taken part in, set against the evolution of the sport over the years – from ink stamps to pin-punches to dibbing (and now MapRunF/G), from master maps to overprinting machines to digital printing, from course planning with a pencil, piece of string and ruler to OCAD, Condes and Purple Pen. 

For a club which always thought it was constrained by its limited terrain, we have somehow produced maps of over forty woods and parks, plus around forty street areas and twenty schools, and in a normal year typically run over thirty events ranging from informal and street events to British Championships. 

The club has grown from 30 members in 1969 to 274 at the end of 2019 and it was a nice accolade to be highlighted by British Orienteering as having the highest percentage of junior members in their 2019 Annual Report.