After the popularity of the Maprunner Guide to IOF Control Descriptions, you can now download two new items to help with your orienteering. These are guides to orienteering map symbols. Click on the images to see a full-size version. The files are jpg images that are designed for printing at A4 size. If you are having trouble then try right clicking and select "Save Link As...." to copy the file to your computer first.

The ISOM 2000 Map Symbols are those used for normal orienteering maps, generally at 1:10,000 or 1:15,000.

The BOF School Map Symbols are those used for school orienteering maps in Great Britain.

Please feel free to distribute these files unchanged or print them out for non-commercial use. Please contact me to discuss any other usage.

(This article was written by Ian Gilliver and is reproduced from Issue 56 of Lokation, the London Orienteering Klubb newsletter.)  

LOK achieved a world first at Chislehurst Caves on the evening of Saturday 19 September 1987: the world's first day-time night orienteering event, or more simply, the world's first underground orienteering event. One hundred and one competitors accepted this unique navigational challenge and some twenty more pursued the less taxing wayfarers course.

The intrepid navigators completed a testing course some 2.5km in length and comprising 22 controls. Winner by a clear minute was Jim Mallinson in little over 25 minutes - not bad for a course with seven sets of master maps. The slowest competitor took more than four times that long.

The caves were formed by human excavation of a chalky hillside. The terrain was essentially flat, cool and gloomy. There were some similarities to a street event, except the streets had no names. Imagine dark grey-walled terraces of parallel or near parallel streets, crossed nearly at right angles with more of the same to form small blocks of buildings, each looking the same as the next. The surface of the streets is uneven, possessing a cobbled quality. Occasionally you would clamber over a pile of earth, obstructing progress down the street, and occasionally you would see a disused toilet block. These latter date from the Second World War when the caves were used as an underground shelter. One competitor showed Hazel Blackstone the bay where as an evacuee he had slept more than 40 years earlier.

(From Lokation 108 in December 1996.)

Honeymoon day one, and a chance to test the large sports bags that LOK gave us as a wedding present. (Thanks to everyone who contributed: we decided we'd leave the wine at home, which just about gave us room for O-kit for two weeks.) The flight to Boston passed slowly enough for me to plan most of the Holmbury badge event, and we managed to get about one hundred miles north before finding a motel.

Day two was a day for culture. We stopped at Fort Ticonderoga to discover how the Americans had whopped the Brits during the War of Independence. Then on north west into the Adirondack mountains, and a visit to Lake Placid. We did the tour of the Olympic ski jumping complex, complete with lunatic people out dry slope ski jumping. The highlight of Helen's trip came when she spotted that Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards was one of the people training with the American team. We have a blurred photo of the back of his head to prove it. And then the final drive into Canada, through Ottawa and on to Wakefield, about twenty miles north of the capital.  We arrived at the event centre just in time to miss the opening ceremony.

(An attempt to be helpful from the O-Net in October 1995.)

> I would like to know the best English word describing the
> distance between two controls in an o-course.
> In Norwegian this word is called 'strekk', and some English
> suggestions are route, lap, leg, stretch and trek...
> I hope anyone can tell me the right word to use.
>
>
> Thanks for any replies!
>
> Oystein Bjorke
>

(Some thoughts on early attempts at low-cost colour map reproduction from an article I wrote on the O-Net in November 1995. We have come an awfully long way since then.)

Here are some thoughts on colour photocopies based on my experience so far in Great Britain.

1) Firstly a quote from the results of National Event 6 in 1993, run by South Wales Orienteering Club on Merthyr Common, a moorland area in South Wales:

"Competitors using the 1:10,000 map were in fact using colour enlarged photocopies of the 1:15,000 map. We are not aware that this has ever been done before but it seems to give satisfactory results. However, it has been brought to our notice that, under the stress of constant folding, the ink, especially the black, tends to flake off (in the same way as has recently been experienced with some ordinarily printed maps). This method saved the cost of having maps printed at all at 1:10,000, it saved the overprinting costs at 1:10,000, it saved the photocopying costs of the description sheets and the labour of gluing them on! It also looks as if it may have saved the event from going into debt." Neil Grant and Nick Kingsford, Planners, NE6

(From an O-Net article I wrote in November 1995.) 

Anyway, here are a couple of moments from LOK folk-lore. I promise you they are both true (he would say that wouldn't he)

1) The British Championships for 1990 were held near Sheffield, about 250km north of London. A certain person drove to the event, and arrived to find there were no signs up. He then realised he had come one week too early. He drove home, and then went back the following week. The mistake on its own is bad enough, but we never understood why he told anyone about it.

2) The area around Bordeaux in France is known for its sand dune areas on the Atlantic coast. At one event the cartographer had got a bit carried away, and drew a blue border all around the mapped area. A certain LOK orienteer got a little lost and decided to relocate by running until he hit the "sea" at the edge of the map. Unfortunately he decided to set off east. The first sea you come to by running east from Bordeaux
is the Adriatic, after about 1000km.

(The Veteran World Cup - now the World Masters - was held in Spain in 1996. Here is an extract from an O-Net article I wrote in April 1996.)

And to end with, a quote from Jorgen Martensson. It seems likely that he has managed the incredible double of being both World Champion and World Veteran Champion (H35) at the same time. Anyway, he was interviewed after he finished the first qualifying race, and asked if he had had any problems. He admitted that he had at first gone to the elite start. Then he remembered that he was running H35...

(From an article I posted to the O-Net in December 1996.)

John gives me an ideal opportunity to provide a tribute to Willie Rushton, who died recently. His book "Pigsticking, A Joy for Life" provides brief details of how to participate in nearly every sport imaginable, and includes a section on orienteering. I quote:

"...I thought it consisted solely of sprinting cross-country through the Pilgrim's Progress with only a despondent A-Z of Slough to bring you solace, a sport designed for clean-living militant Christians.

(An article I posted to the O-Net in December 1997.)

December 1997 has been fairly traumatic so far. I started a new job on the 1st. I managed two days there before a short break to be at the birth of my first child. James made his first appearance at an O event at Wisley on the 14th, and I discovered the joys of split starts for the first time at Trent Park on the 21st. But the really momentous occasion was at the SAXONS event at Ightham on the 28th - for this was my last race as an M21.