26th November - Muncaster

Muncaster is a fairly small area but it’s quite interesting and I really enjoyed the course. The sausage butty in the Muncaster Castle Café was good too.

Technically I had a good run although I still felt that I was lacking in energy. Didn’t make any errors apart from some brief hesitation to check location just before running into a couple of controls.

Bilbo (Martin Bagness) beat me by a minute again. It seems I am destined never to orienteer faster than him but considering his impeccable O credentials I suppose that’s fair enough.

Results Page

20th November, Tim Watkins Blodslitet

This is one of my favourite events, so good that I wish I had timed my return to orienteering a couple of years sooner so I could have competed in some of the earlier years.

Areas like Torver Common (last year) and Bethecar Moor are perfect for long challenging races in fantastic areas. For me these two races epitomise everything that inspires me about moving efficiently in the terrain. Even in the Lakes I think they are very special places because they are big, have complex contour and rock detail and are relatively track-less, yet it’s easy to forget how accessible they are.

Putting the controls out must have been a mammoth task for the organisers. I didn’t envy the job of having to start collecting them late on a very cold Sunday afternoon as the wind and rain started advance from the west.

Personally I didn’t feel that I ran too well. I felt very tired early on and was more or less in survival mode (just finish), in the last third of the race. I did prepare well for the event so I had hoped to run faster but having started with a cold this morning makes sense. So much for staying off the ale again.

Well done SROC!

Results Page and some history of the event

Got behind with my blog somewhat over the last couple of weeks. Here’s an update of events I have competed in since Buxton.

12th November, Arnside Knott



I work close to Arnside Knott and know it from lunchtime runs. It turned out to be an excellent orienteering area. I had a reasonably good run apart from making a couple of small errors on 4 and 5 – cost me about 2 mins. Peter Haines caught me up at 5 and we had a bit of a burn-up for the next few controls, which was great fun.

Results Page

5th November, November Classic – New Forest



This was a Vets Interland selection event which is why I made the effort to drive to Southampton and back. I thought I might have an outside chance of getting a good result. Although I initially ran well I was caught out early by a pit in a vague flat area of bracken and clearings. In fact I had problems with every pit feature on the whole course which put me well out of the running and 10 mins down on the winner Michael Billinghurst. I guess having run in the area previously might have helped but really, I think I need to put this down to not remembering one of my O mantras: ‘Adapt your technique according to the terrain’ – I didn’t

Results Page

29th Ocober, Cambus O’May

An area of mixed forest, with complex moraine detail, in a beautiful setting. The courses were short to allow for the rough going in some parts of the area. Boulders slowed progress significantly in parts. I didn’t have a bad run but was unlucky to miss a small re-entrant towards the end, which cost me 4 mins. A couple of other sloppy errors put me 6 mins down on Martin and 3 mins down on Donald.

Overall Results

A link to the map on Martin’s site


28th October, Scottish Night Championships – Potarch

I was pretty daunted by the prospect of running in an unfamiliar area at night so decided to go for a super safe and steady approach. It paid off because I won! Although there weren’t many people running M45 there were some good runners including Martin Dean. Talking to Martin the next day he said that his approach was to go fast because the course was so short but unfortunately he made some costly errors.

Overall Results

A link to the map on Martin’s site