- Eborienteers Orienteering Club
- Attackpoint
- SportTracks
- Green Course (3.7km 135m)
It’s quite a long way to Cawthorne Banks and you need to drive through a lot of gorgeous North York Moors to get there (well you don’t, but we did) but it was worth the trip. We registered for the courses we fancied then a long trek to the Start which was perched classily beside Elleron Lake. Roberta toddled off on the Orange course, and I started at the same time on Green.
The first four controls were easy. It was all running and easy navigation and I was soon out of breath from the hard running. Things toughened up a bit after that and the controls became more challenging. Then came control 8. Getting a bit over-confident I crashed through the undergrowth in the general direction of control 8. Soon realising that I hadn’t really thought this through, and the reluctance of the control to simply present itself in my path, I started looking for a catching feature – an obvious feature somewhere after the control that would allow me to relocate – that is, work out where the hell I was. Relocating is what you do when you’ve gone a bit astray and you’re desperately looking for nice feature, like a fence or a road or a building that will make things clear where you are. Time ticked on and my minor error was becoming a major error. Was I relocating, or was I lost? There were no obvious catching features and I was, quite literally, just stumbling around in a wood. I stumbled down to the stream and picked a direction. Eventually a footbridge, a road, and oh good grief, I’m there?! Really?? Does this warrant multiple exclamation marks?? Yes!!!
I often ponder over the fickleness of this sport – being both fascinated and horrified by how a simple mistake can pretty much blow your race apart. Sure enough, 26 minutes to find a control that should have taken 5, and my position at the bottom of the results pretty much guaranteed. Well you live and learn. Or other people seem to, anyway.
