For those who don’t mind substituting pavements and precincts for tussocks and trees, this weekend offered a variety of urban orienteering in the North East.
On Saturday Northern Navigators held a double sprint event at Brandon, a large village on the edge of Durham with housing estates from the 1950s and 60s on the site of a demolished colliery. Estates of this vintage make for excellent urban orienteering with terraced houses separated by grass areas and walkways, and remarkably little traffic. Everyone did two courses, with a gap of an hour or so between as the organisers moved the start and finish. At the start, the safety information included the unusual advice to watch out for washing lines. This proved necessary as a number of people reported having to negotiate a route between hanging towels.
Top three results (for the two events combined) came from:
Jeff – 3rd on Course 1
Keith – 2nd on Course 2
Christine – 1st on Course 5
(Full results and Routegadget here)
On Sunday there was a UK Urban League event in the heart of Newcastle, organised by NATO. The competition area included two universities, China Town and parts of the town wall. Assembly was on a lawn in front of the Hancock Museum and the presence of a coffee/ice cream van, picnic tables and warm sunshine produced a very sociable atmosphere. Sitting there, surrounded by busy roads it was hard to imagine that the area would make for good orienteering, but it certainly did. Courses were well planned with a mixture of leg lengths, interesting route choices and a tricky section at the end with lots of short legs and changes of direction to catch you out when tired and hot. Unfortunately the four longest courses were affected by a problem with the map; most people probably didn’t notice but inconsistently mapped underpasses (missing the sharks teeth symbol) made one route choice leg very unfair. There was an official protest and the leg was removed from the results.
Top three results came from:
Matthew – 2nd Men Young Juniors
Karen- 1st Women Open
Isabel – 2nd Women Vets
Keith – 3rd Men Ultra Vet
Christine – 1st Women Ultra Vet
(Full results and Routegadget here)
Border Liners Orienteering Club 