SELOC Orienteering Club

Numbers were always going to be down given the combined impact of the holiday season and the imminent Scottish 6 day. However, it is always worth staging an event when the weather is good and there is at least one competitor. We did better than that - there were 14 competitors and the sunshine was amazing!  Add the fact that Bolton Council were organising other events in the park including archery (ask Phil Ellis), wood carving, brass band, climbing wall and ice creams ... and Queens Park was a very good place to do orienteering on 30th July 2011.

We kept the planning requirements to a minimum this time deciding to make use of the existing POC course.  I don't think this is cheating on the part of a planner as clearly GMOA have put considerable efforts in to making these courses available - thanks to Berry Blackhall and Darren Baker in the Queens Park case.

We had some new faces enjoy the Yellow course, who were enjoying other activities in the park. Well done to Adina and Emily who raced round the Yellow in 17 minutes. Berryl used her superior knowledge of the POC in Queens Park to in her words 'shuffle' round the Orange in an impressive 23 minutes. Lisa Kidd spent a considerable amount of her race time discussing marketing of orienteering with Bolton Council - so we should probably excuse her seemingly slow time!

Paul had a go at my score course, which I think could be a good format for other Saturday morning events in the future. I know Phil Ellis is planning another score for the September event at Tandle Hill. Paul completed the 22 controls in less than the time limit demonstrating the challenge I had set wasn't quite hard enough for the best athletes! Well done to Ross who enjoyed the 'strategy' dimension of his first score event.

That completes my summary as I am off to Scotland for the 6 day. Thanks for coming to the event. Pete Kidd.