One competitor gives her personal account of Saturday's night orienteering event on Ilkley Moor.

Kay Hawke member of Pendle Forest Orienteers, says: 

"Having taken part in only a handful of night ‘O’ events, watching the snowfall hours before the night event was to start, I knew that the event ahead on Ilkley Moor was going to be a test of many things, navigation, endurance, and not least, resilience! We travelled over to Ilkley in the afternoon, wondering how the event team was managing to even get onto the Moor let alone accurately be able to put out the controls precisely with the even added pressure of it being a National event! All of the volunteers at Airienteers did a sterling job getting the event on and braving the elements just so that a few hundred people could run around in the snow!

Thankfully by the time of the event, we were left with a clear evening with the snow gone from the skies but a heap left on the ground. The climb up to the Start luring you into a false sense of security that you would have clearly marked paths under your feet for the rest of the night! Soon the biting wind crept its way up the hill and I was thankful to start just to get warm!

Heading off into the night in a new location with just a headtorch and a map for guidance is never easy but soon after the start was out of sight it was apparent it was going to be a test of mettle. Thick snow covered everything, from foot-high boulders to paths, to gullies and everything in between. It didn’t take long to get to the area where most courses had their first set of controls with many people circling the numerous boulders that litter the north of the area, talk about easing us in gently! After a few twists and turns (and slips and slides) the first controls were dibbed and the Blue course sent you off eastwards to the more exposed land. Snow trodden tracks made by competitors didn’t quite match up to the paths marked on the map but headed (kind of) the right way as the usual line features, you’d rely on in ‘normal’ conditions disappeared under the snow. You simply had no idea if you were traveling over a path, ferns, or a boulder field, just secretly hoping you’d made the right decisions and turns along the way!

It's fair to say that whilst you’re out there, sometimes alone, in a snow-filled depression knowing you have most of the controls to complete still, you wonder why you do these things! And then you find a cairn you were looking (hoping) for and the path you’d lost 200m ago and you get the satisfaction orienteering constantly brings us. I was looking at the competitors as I was going around, some young, some old, and knew many people wouldn’t understand *why* we do this, especially in these conditions and I kept coming back to satisfaction. There’s just something about getting to that control you never thought you’d find, getting to the finish that seemed miles away when you were on the other side of the Moor an hour ago and you forget about the misery of that wind that nearly blew your map away at control 11 or that mud bank you slid down! And afterwards you think, I just survived on a wild Yorkshire Moor in the middle of winter on my own for a few hours, with just my map and a headtorch, how awesome is that!"

Congratulations to both Graham Gristwood (Forth Valley Orienteers) and Megan Carter-Davies (Swansea Bay Orienteering Club) on being crowned Elite Champions for 2022.

Provisional results are available here.

British Orienteering would like to take this opportunity to thank all Airienteers club members who helped to make this event such a success.  Thank you for all your hard work and efforts, especially on the day with the challenging weather conditions.  Thank you to all who took part and congratulations to the overall winners in each age class.