SELOC Successes

An unusually quiet week with few events on locally. Only 3 SELOC members braved the rush hour traffic to get to Tuesday night’s MDOC Street League event at High Lane with Paul Turner bringing home the best score after finishing in 10^th spot – though another half point would have zoomed him up to 8^th. Ed Mellor and Anne Speakman were unusually low down the results list in 36^th place, maybe they can tell us what went wrong.

Big event of the weekend, for the night orienteers amongst us anyway, was Saturday’s Northern Night Championships on Ilkley Moor. No doubt encouraged by the resilience of his dodgy knees at last weekend’s NW Night League, Stephen Richards put them through some more pain by running Green course on this quite tough and tricky area. They rewarded him with 30^th place, a little ahead of Kev Latham who was 35^th on the same course.

Ed Mellor was our only competitor on Sunday, taking in TVOC’s Chiltern Challenge near High Wycombe whilst visiting the area. He ran the Green course so declared himself non-competitive as this is so much shorter than his normal Short Brown, but would have placed 22^nd if he’d not done that so it was clearly a strong field.

A short report gives us chance to look at the current state of the NW Night League. With just one event to go, Steve Wilson is our best placed man in the 19-49 age category, in an excellent 3^rd spot. But he already has a full set of 3 counting scores so will find it hard to improve. In the W19-49 class, it’s a double for the Wilson family as Cath is our best performer – currently 4^th, but with only 1 scoring event she could easily rise to take top spot if she can manage a good score at that last race – the girls in 2^nd and 3^rd place are from outside the area so less likely to compete. In the M50+ class, Kev Latham is 7^th and our only member to have competed in all 4 events so far. But Mark Seddon and Stephen Richards aren’t far behind him and, with only 2 scoring events each at present, could overtake him if they manage that elusive good run at the last event. That is due to be staged by DEE on 2 March near Delamere. Watch this space!

Upcoming Events

A double helping for Street Leaguers this coming week with DEE’s event at what looks to be the interesting venue of Port Sunlight on Tuesday 19^th, followed by a very convenient SROC event at Chorley on Wednesday night. That SROC event is also the next in our SELOC club league – see the SELOC website if you need more information on how the Club League will work this year. On Sunday, 24 February, there’s an EPOC event at Royd’s Hall woodlands, near Halifax.

The following week gets busy again, I’m pleased to say. On Wednesday 27^th, AIRE have a night urban score event in Saltaire that doesn’t clash with SROC street league, and on what looks like a “proper” ISSOM map. The following night it is MDOC’s street league event at Gee Cross, near Hyde. Then to the weekend, where on Saturday 2 March in addition to their night event mentioned above DEE also have a schools event at the very pleasant Little Budworth while PFO are at Gawthorpe Hall, near Burnley, the same day. Sunday 3 March sees AIRE celebrating their 50^th birthday (so young!) with a regional event on Ilkley Moor in daylight this time, though our long distance aficionados will no doubt prefer the determinedly tough Tim Watkins Trophy (aka the Blodslitet or blood-letting) being held by SROC on Silver How in the Lakes.

Note also that next entry deadline for Easter’s JK is 24 February while May’s British Champs in Yorkshire has a price rise on 10 March.