The government has issued new guidance for the national lockdown in England, which comes into force on Tuesday 5 January.

The guidance states that:

• Outdoor exercise is still permitted but should be limited to once per day.
• You can exercise in a public outdoor place:
  • by yourself.
  • with the people you live with.
  • with your support bubble (if you are legally permitted to form one).
  • in a childcare bubble where providing childcare.
  • or, when on your own, with one person from another household.
• Outdoor exercise should be done locally wherever possible, but you can travel a short distance within your area to do so if necessary (for example, to access an open space). If you need to travel you should stay local – meaning avoiding travelling outside of your village, town or the part of a city where you live – and look to reduce the number of journeys you make overall.
• All outdoor sports clubs, centres, venues and facilities will close, alongside indoor facilities.
• Organised outdoor sport for disabled people is allowed to continue, and we will provide further detail on this once we have information from the Government.

All organised orienteering activities, including events, competitions, leagues and coaching, are therefore suspended with immediate effect (except for orienteering for disabled people, on which we will provide further information in due course).

POCs and VOCS

POCs and VOCs can still be used for individual exercise. Courses should be registered with British Orienteering as activities to provide insurance cover for the club and planner. They must not be used for competitions or leagues.

We would recommend that you add any courses on to the British Orienteering POC portal via your club POC Manager or contact nweir@britishorienteering.org.uk

The full national lockdown: stay at home guidelines are available on the UK government website.

Guidance for orienteering clubs

Up to date support and guidance for UK orienteering clubs is available via our COVID page.

The First Minister has today announced that Tier 4 restrictions have been brought forward to the 20 December 2020.

However, the guidance that the Welsh Executive has published is clear that people who live in Tier 4 areas must not travel out of their Tier 4 area other than for legally permitted reasons, and that people who live in Tier 4 areas must not leave or be outside of their home except where they have a specific purpose or ‘reasonable excuse’.

For those living in a Tier 4 area, unlimited outdoor exercise is still permitted, including in parks and the countryside. Exercise must be alone, or in a public outdoor place with your household, support bubble, or one other person. Exercise should be done locally wherever possible, but you can travel a short distance within your Tier 4 area to do so if necessary (for example, to access an open space).

Orienteers are obviously required to comply with the new restrictions and with other government guidance.

British Orienteering will the guidance as further details of the new restrictions become available.

Sunday 1st August - Saturday 7 August 2021

The 23rd Scottish 6 Days Orienteering event will be held in Lochaber between the 1st and 7th August 2021 (immediately following O-Ringen in Sweden). Lochaber is a scenic area in the Scottish Highlands, including Fort William, the outdoor capital of Scotland and Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK.

British Orienteering updated it’s Return to Orienteering Guidance following the recent publication of additional Government and Sport England guidance.

The information has been produced based on the latest information available to us and applies to England only.

The key change to British Orienteering’s Guidance is around travel into and out of areas classified as Tier 3 which is:

“People should not travel into or out of a tier 3 (very high alert) area in order to participate in or volunteer at an orienteering competition or activity.

This does not apply to travel where it is necessary to enable supervised coaching sessions or competitions for under-18s or activities for disabled people, although in these cases travel should still be minimised and kept to short distances only.”

To support those clubs that are delivering competitions in Tier 1 or 2 areas who wish to restrict the entries to competitors living in the same tier we have amended 8.1:

“It is up to organisers to decide whether to allow open entry, whether to give priority to members of their own club or to members of British Orienteering, and whether to restrict entries so as to discourage travel into and out of tier 3 ("very high alert") areas”.