Clocaenog, 1981. Even at the time this map felt a bit retro - 1:20000 scale and of an upland Sitka plantation. Does anyone still use them anymore - oh hello ELO.
The bit below the road to the south was used a bit later as Bod Petural.

Last weekend my club organised for his members a club championship. It was not that easy, like it has to be, but again a nice race

Zungenbrecher: der 25.te 24-stunden-OLfindet 26 in Heyda statt.*
*24 Stunden OL ist ein Wettkampf fr Teams mit sechs Mitgliedern, die reihum OL machen bis die 24h rum sind. Fun!

I've been invited to take part in my very first orienteering race! Will this be fun What can go wrong What could you teach me about gear, preparation, tactics

coaching today, always fun. Mixed squads from across the middle of the UK. I am the 'Guardian of The East Base', which I'm now going to add to my resum...

And I never realized until now that he has produced videos (in German) on using to process open geodata for maps.

I talked to Christian Rietze at a competition in Hamburg last year, when I noticed his headcam. He told me that he almost always ran with it. His collection of videos at is fantastic.

Last autumn, we invited our top mappers to spend a single day mapping a small forest near Sursee (LU), Switzerland. The forest is a typical Mittelland examplenothing spectacular, but full of the usual challenges around generalisation (point features) and vegetation classification.

Now at the Annual Swiss Orienteering Convention in Olten, Mark Gloor presented the results of this experiment.

Check out his slides:

Lizard Hill and the Gallops 1981 Dave Gittus & Warm up for the 1981. I walked to the event from Shifnal Station on Good Friday. 2018 version: www.wrekin.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#15

Cunning

RE:

If this was about orienteering I would not be laughing

Beaudesert 1981. The other half of the map used on the first day of the event. In those days there were two long distance classic races and a replay in the prestigious race. Cunning

Gestern lief ich meinen ersten Indoor-OL anlsslich dem 2. Zrcher Indoor OL im Gebude de ZHDK, Toni Areal.
Das war soooo geil. Such a thrill (43 Min. full speed few mistakes)

Angehngt die beiden Laufkarten (try it). Geile Bahnen ber 8! Etagen und Karten nach dem aktuellen Draft der ISInOM (neue internationale Indoor Norm) durch Peter Grau und Janine Dnner von der OLG ZH.

Eastern part of the Beaudesert map from 1981.

Bishop's Wood 1981. This Staffordshire pine wood contains the remains of an old glass factory. It was used a lot between 1976 and 1986 but has long been missing from the fixture lists. This was my last ever run in the .

Did you know the IOF has published a draft for an indoor orienteering symbol set, not only as a specification but also as an .omap file

Are there any good frontends for /#rogaining

I mostly use government forestry maps for teaching but they are getting a bit old and include a fair bit of extraneous detail.

At a minimum I need to be able to print to a PDF at a defined scale with UTM grid, contours, roads and tracks. Blazed trees would be great but probably a stretch goal.

Noch ein wenig Kartenstudium in + vor der ... Wer hat mich fr 12 km angemeldet

Indoor tomorrow.
It is going to be fun

It's the periodic sort-out and filing of maps if I ever needed a visual representation of how many events I've done in the last few months

No pic as obvs didn't have phone with me, but today's race in the snow was fun. Easier to see further in forest, easier to run as vegetation squashed down, easier to see where others had gone, easier to spot orange triangles on white background.
Reminded me of the Dales Trophy in 1989, still my snowiest race.

I had rather overconfidently assumed that my days of making serious errors in were behind me. Consigned to my beginner days. You know, about two months ago. Well, today was the wake up call. Ran off the edge of the map and was totally lost for some time. Nice day out in the winter sunshine, though.

A training race in the snow... and when was the last time my shoes were this clean

Actually I got an shirt for Christmas too

Advances in technology

Today I'm going to wear my new T-shirt that I got for Christmas in "Child buys excellent and thoughtful present" shocker.

I knew that had become my number one hobby. But I didn't expect to get withdrawal symptoms from a two week Christmas layoff.

Running, navigating and getting lost
Orienteering in the Kattenbos in Lommel.
This checkpoint I missed and 20 minutes later I found it finally. What a relieve !

Be Expert with Map and Compass: The Complete Orienteering Handbook 4ed by Carina Kjellstrom Elgin & Bjrn Kjellstrm, 2025

The classic map and compass navigation guide, updated with new features and tips

How to read a map, map symbols, traveling by map and compass alone or by map and compass together, finding bearings, sketching maps, and traveling in the wilderness

The Military League (South) festive score course on Tuesday included three unmarked controls: a mobile Santa, a mobile fairy, and a (fixed) Christmas tree.
Who said the don't have a sense of humour

My 2025 summary

104 events totalling 708km

Won:
- Club Summer MapRun league (overall)
- Club all-events league (Men Vets)
- East Anglian Championship (M50)
- East Anglian Forest League (M50)
- East Anglian Urban League (Men Vets)

Plus:
- 3rd Southern England Orienteering Urban League (Men Vets)

Not a bad final year before I move up to M55 and Supervets.

RE:

Very happy with today's progress of porting Purple Pen (purple-pen.org) to Linux.

Yesterday , city sprint in Ostrava. For the first time list of controls didn't fit into my holder (But course was just 4,7km long.)

BTW one of magical aspect of this sport is how few hundred of people suddenly gathers in the middle of nowhere and after few hours just disappears.

This was unofficial event organized by single man. And there were 176 runners... I'm so glad that one can still place box for 3 per map and it just works.

That'll screw up

Running round the streets of Stratford in East London, after dark. Where's the pleasure in that Well, it's a lot of fun when it's a event, especially since a post-race pint and chat is part of it. Thanks to Dartford Orienteers for organising it.

Several hard falls during todays practise. Not advised to do that in heavy rain wearing glasses with virtually no visibility. No pain in the beginning, but now there's some. But very likely no bigger damage.

Titterstone Clee Hill 1984. 1980s Harlequins maps had a very distinctive look. Fast grassland with mining and quarrying heritage.

Blea Tarn 1980. Northern Championships. I was lucky enough to run on this map again, many years later. A superb area with runnable grassland and lovely scenery. Finish was in a big garden.
This is the Eskdale Blea Tarn.

www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3618732

East Monaughty 1980. Clearfelling soon took this forest off the fixture list. I would have spent a lot of time on an EUOC bus to get there. Premarked maps were a well loved luxury at this time.

www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3249538

Blackford Hill event today on a 1:5,000 map. Here is the 1978 1:15000 map of the area by Andy Curtis

After four years of waiting, we have a new Mapper version to help us create perfect orienteering maps for free.

Thank you to all the OpenOrienteering team for promoting our wonderful sport .