One of the things drummed into us on last year’s ML training course at Glenmore Lodge was the importance of navigation – and that a handy ‘off-hill’ way of boosting your navigation skills was to do some orienteering. With this in mind, I’ve done a couple of short events with my local club – Wrekin Orienteers – to see how it went.  The intention was to avoid actually running, and just concentrate on the nav, but needless to say it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

The first event at Carding Mill Valley was on terrain that I’m reasonably familiar with. The navigation itself wasn’t difficult, but making a good route choice is a harder challenge. I was pleased to tick off 18 of the 20 controls within the 45 minute time-limit, but a major cockup misunderstanding about the rules saw me collect 70 penalty points and be classed a less-than-impressive 21st out of 25.

The second event in the grounds of Concorde College was in very different terrain, and using a 1:3000 scale map takes some getting used to. No results published as yet, but I’m confident I didn’t do much worse.