Daniel

On a lovely Sunday morning Norfolk Orienteering Club hosted a mixed event at Waterloo Park in north Norwich. White, Yellow & Orange courses were provided as a ‘Try-O’ session for those new or newer to the sport, with a fun relay for regular club members.

For all those new to a NOR event we hope you enjoyed yourselves, and if you wish find out more about the club or Orienteering, do check out the other pages on our website. If you’re interested (or might be interested) in joining, and we didn’t capture your email address, do drop the Membership Secretary a line at NORmembership [at] norfolkoc.co.uk  You can see your results at the link below.

For those in the relay we hoped you enjoyed something a bit different, and whilst it was just for fun be sure to also click the ‘Results’ button once on the Relay Results page to see the times for each individual course – some of the split times may surprise you!

Our next event (and the last before the summer break) is at Bacton Woods, North Walsham Sunday 10th July – details will be posted here shortly – hope to see you there!

Results

White/Yellow/Orange courses – Results and Split Times
Relay Results and Split Times

Organiser’s Comments

This was my first event as organiser and Liz’s first event as planner. What could possibly go wrong?

Luckily the event was great fun, with several new families coming to try, and five relay teams competing for the honours of 2022 Relay Champions. Well done to Dave, Eden & Daniel for their win.

Waterloo Park proved a nice venue and has given several of us reason to consider using it for a Schools event and/or another Try-O event. As was proven, courses can be made challenging enough with thought, and the cafe and toilets are very welcome. The relay was also great fun and we’ll certainly look for more opportunity to add these to the program.

Thanks to all those who helped. We say the same after every event, but these things just wouldn’t happen without folk pitching up and mucking in. Particular thanks from me go to Liz for her planning and to Paul for all his assistance.

Ben.

Planner’s Comments

As Ben has mentioned, this was my first attempt at planning courses and I’d thought beforehand that it would be a (relatively) easy way to start – small venue, more of an urban setting than our usual woodland events and plenty of time to pull it all together. Despite that, we were still tinkering with courses on Monday and there had been several times over the last couple of months I’d cursed under my breath because we’d decided a fantastic course we’d planned couldn’t be used as it was too long, or I was trying to get people to run the wrong way, or didn’t have enough route choice. It turns out you just can’t get ‘perfect’.

Having spent weeks planning courses, in the end it was difficult to judge whether they were good or not, so I was pleased with the comments I heard today, from families who had gone round the White and/or Yellow courses, club runners who had tackled Orange and from the relay teams. It sounded like people enjoyed themselves and that there was some challenge to the courses. I hope people who have never tried orienteering before today will search out other events to see how they get on.

I have to give a massive vote of thanks to Paul Garton who voluntarily took on the job on ‘teaching me planning’ (and who in all honesty did most of the work). Possibly he’s only passed on a fraction of all he knows but it was always well received. Thanks also go to Jonathan and Paul who had the job of updating the map and making the hedges ‘more green please’ and to Ben who contributed with ideas and advice and much needed ‘it’ll be fine, don’t worry’.

For those thinking they might like to be involved in planning an event, do make yourself known. It is a real challenge but it’s also pretty thrilling and you get to see a side to orienteering you’d never otherwise see, plus there is a mass of help available so it’s never a one-person effort. Do it.

Liz.

Results and Split Times

Organiser’s Comments

Thanks to everyone who attended today’s event – especially those who took the time to help.  The weather was kind; the forest was fairly quiet, but John’s courses were challenging and enjoyed by all who attended.
Helen.

Planner’s Comments

Quite a lot of the potential control sites at Horsford are point features in rather featureless blocks of forest and the addition of fresh bracken growth made some controls quite challenging to find. They required quite careful bearings and while I tried to make the flags visible and trampled some bracken I apologise if you had difficulty in finding some of the depressions or rootstocks. The recent surge of undergrowth did make the Orange course more challenging for Juniors than I would have liked so well done to all those that tackled it. Having put out the controls on the morning of the event I was very grateful to the volunteers who collected them at the end of the day.
John.

Final Results & Split Times
• Choose “Classes” results for those interested in the Urban Leagues.
• Otherwise choose to display by Course.
Routegadget & Splitsbrowser
WinSplits
BOF Ranking Scores
UK Urban League Standings
Southern England Orienteering Urban League Standings

Organiser’s Comments

I’m sure they didn’t forecast that rain.  At least it dried up (mostly) later. 

Thank you all for coming, we certainly had more entries than for our last Urban!  Course 5 proved very popular, so we only had one map left over, and fortunately found a few spare Description lists for those that wanted them (most of you I think!). 

It just takes one little thing to play up, and it throws the timescales out.  Our start clock decided not to beep the correct intervals first thing, so that delayed me putting out the taped route to the Start.  Apologies for the bemusement some of you felt. 

Otherwise, things ran pretty smoothly, thanks to the lovely accommodating helpers!  So many orienteers are based in Norwich, it’s a struggle to get enough people to help out west, so special thanks to those who did more than one shift, and to those who were “persuaded” to collect controls at the end. 

I will also mention the venue which people seemed to appreciate, and I would particularly like to thank the Alive Lynnsport team who were very helpful throughout the day. 

Thank you all for coming, it is a good feeling to see so many people enjoy themselves. 

Julia Paul.

Planner’s Comments

I would also like to thank all the control collectors, especially those for which it was there second (or third) job of the day. Thanks also to Michael for controlling, checking the map and generally improving my courses.

Having planned the last event in King’s Lynn, I didn’t particularly want to plan on the same area again, as it had significant restrictions and I felt that I had exhausted all the options for interesting courses. I think it needs a fresh pair of eyes to tease out the possibilities around the town centre and quay. Thus I embarked on another mapping / planning exercise. I quickly decided that the area around Alive Lynnsport offered some interesting terrain, so started on the map. My initial plan was to take the longer courses to the Gaywood and Fairstead estates to the south east of Lynnsport, but was adivised against this by Michael (a local), due to the high levels of vandalism in these areas. Maybe somebody braver than me will put on an event there in the future, as it is cracking urban orienteering terrain. Consequently, I took the longer courses west, which I think offered some interesting route choices.

All the courses visited the 2 estates either side of Lynnsport Way, which as someone mentioned had more of “sprint” feel to these legs. Whether these estates were less prone to vandalism than Fairstead, I don’t know, but fortunately we had no incidents today. There was then the long leg north-south. On all courses, it was in fact shorter to run through the Lynnsport grounds rather than taking the northern route, which was just dead running. However, I should have probably made the “Lynnsport” route more advantageous, as I see on routegadget that a lot of people took the “boring” route. It was, in fact, about 50m to 100m shorter through Lynnsport, but the navigation, especially at the beginning of the leg, would probably have wiped this advantage out.

I guess the biggest area of controversy was the mapping of the paths in the small bit of scrub / forest (Salter’s Sanctuary) towards the end of the courses. The problem was that seasonal paths kept popping up throughout the planning process, so after discussion with Michael, I decided to only map the “managed” paths, which were also the ones marked on the maps at the entrance to Salter’s Sanctuary. A lot of people turned right on to one of the seasonal paths, which became more “path-like” as the morning progressed. However, I would suggest that people were still in “urban” mode, i.e. turn first right, whereas if you look at the map, you come out of the scrubby forest having crossed an earthbank. At this point the path skirts a large open area before splitting, the right hand fork taking you to the control. There is also a large knoll south of the path, just before the path junction. When people turned right, they were only about 10m from the earthbank and at the start of the open area. As our club captain said “A bit of forest in an urban event is always sure to catch me out”. Hopefully, it did not spoil your enjoyment of the courses today.

Any feedback would be most welcome at jonathan (AT) norfolkoc.co.uk.

Jonathan Gilbert

Controller’s Comments

Great event today – Jonathan Gilbert’s courses were well received, even the rain did not stop the smiles. Julia as usual was the proverbial Swan, ensuring even with a much reduced number of volunteers the event ran smoothly. 

Well done and thanks for the late volunteers to get the controls in. 

Michael Chopping. 

Results and Split Times
WinSplits
Routegadget & Splitsbrowser
BOF Ranking Scores

Planner’s Comments

Sandringham is an area which is being very actively managed with areas of tree thinning and rhododendron clearing, while in other areas the rhodos run rampant, so the first task was to get the map as accurate as possible. I hope I caught the important changes, and I’m aware there’s more work to be done!

My planning was quite rusty so I’m very grateful to my Controller, Sarah Mansel, for clear guidance. It’s a terrific area for the region, with its variety of terrain and contour detail for the more technical courses. While a couple of people found the problems I’d missed, the majority seem to have enjoyed the challenges of the courses. Thanks for the kind comments, and also the helpful advice.

I’m very grateful to Leanne and Keziah Bailey, who helped me set out a lot of controls on Saturday, and to all the control collectors that Alan Bedder found for me – dividing the map between them proved a logistical challenge!

Finally thank you all for coming, and bringing such fine weather with you.

Julia.

Controller’s Comments

It has been a pleasure to work with Julia, and I hope that you all enjoyed her challenging courses on such a beautiful spring day. There has been much clearance of rhododendrons in the last few years and the bracken was generally low enough to not impede running too much. I think we all may be a bit rusty and are still getting used to the routine of regular orienteering, and my knowledge about the proximity of controls has been improved so hopefully I won’t offer the same advice in future. Thanks to the Bedder family for organising the event and all the other NOR helpers needed to make the event run smoothly.

Sarah.