Orienteering weekend in Ilkley, Yorkshire.
Two members of the club travelled up to Ilkley in Yorkshire for an orienteering training weekend with Durham, Bristol and Loughborough University. Over the weekend they went to 5 different locations, experiencing different terrains and exercises. At each location we set up the checkpoints with control kites and then there were several different exercises to choose from. These ranged from a beginner white course with controls in easy to find positions, to a windows course with only small visible windows on the map where around each control to help improve our work with bearings.
On Saturday night half of the group did night orienteering, running through the forest with headtorches, adding an exciting, albeit challenging aspect to the navigation. We finished up on Sunday afternoon with a team relay across parkland; very different to the dense vegetation dense moors we had been on, but great fun! It was a great weekend, running on some awesome trails through parks, woods and moors, across boulder fields and through bushes. The range of courses at each location allowed everyone to get the most out of the weekend from complete beginners, to experienced orienteers and both our members improved their orienteering skills over the weekend. It was also nice to meet the teams from the other unis and hopefully we can get involved with more orienteering events with them in the future.
