A good number of BL members attended one or both days of the North Yorkshire Urban weekend organised by CLOK.
Saturday’s event was at Bedale, a historic town with a large, mostly cobbled, market square. It’s the first time it’s been used for orienteering and courses made the most of the old alleyways and confusingly shaped roads of a modern housing estate. After the recent cooler weather the afternoon’s heat came as a bit of a surprise.
Top ten results came from Keith (5th on Brown), Stella (4th on Green), Andy (10th on Green), Tricia (4th on Short Green) and Martin (7th on Short Green).
Sunday’s event was a larger affair – a UK Urban League event at Richmond. Even before the event took place it was causing controversy. The preliminary details didn’t try to hide the fact that there had been a difference of opinion between the mapper (who was also the planner) and the controller about the extent to which buildings within olive-green out of bounds areas should be shown. (See https://www.clok.org.uk/events2025/250601_Richmond_fly.htm for details). A straw poll suggests that most competitors and experienced mappers want buildings to be shown.
But when it actually came to the day, the real issue was the difficulty of reading the very detailed map at 1:4000 (for all age classes), with some controls apparently totally enclosed by uncrossable boundaries. Despite this most people enjoyed their courses and appreciated the tricky, well-planned courses and varied terrain; the event details mentioned “the medieval castle, a cobbled market place with its narrow passageways, and housing estates ranging from Georgian to modern”. And in addition were playing fields, a school campus (with a sneakily placed control below a walkway) and steep woodland (optional and probably wrong)! In contrast to the heat of Saturday it was a cool day with some very heavy showers and longer periods of drizzle for later starters. Slippery cobbles made shoe choice very important.
BL members finishing in the top three in their classes were: Thomas (2nd Young Junior Men), Matthew (3rd Young Junior Men), Stella (3rd Women Super Vet), Keith (2nd Men Ultra Vet), Karen (3rd Women Open).
Border Liners Orienteering Club 