What is Orienteering?

Most people, when they think of orienteering, may picture a small orange and white sign with a letter on it on the corner of a building.
In stark contrast, proper orienteering involves running through varying terrain and on uneven ground using a specialised map and compass, navigating carefully between control points at speed and sometimes even at night!
 

Courses can be very physically demanding as they tend to be in woods and forests with brambles, bracken and other undergrowth, or hills and fells with bogs, rocks and many, many contour lines. See top left photo for a map extract of some of the toughest Lake District
areas.

Events are held all over the country using electronic timing equipment and runs can be anywhere between 1 and 20km, with less technical courses for beginners. The two typical formats are linear courses - get these controls in this order as fast as possible -
and less often score courses - get as many controls in a certain time limit.

More recently, sprint and urban orienteering around streets, housing estates, town centres and university campuses has bloomed, attracting more runners and those less willing to haul themselves through bushes, thus brining a wider audience to the sport.

What we do at Warwick Mountains

Before Covid, there used to be a dedicated orienteering club before it was subsumed into Mountains and eventually discontinued; our aim is to build more interest as it provides good practise for map skills and finer navigation, as well as improving our thinking under pressure and
fitness. It also gives us the opportunity to engage with other universities at BUCS.

As you might expect, the West Midlands does not offer great opportunities for orienteering but the local club Octavian Droobers (OD) manages to put on a decent programme of events each year including some smaller events on an app called MapRun.
Their local events are an excellent starting point with shorter beginner courses on offer, typically at less technical venues.

As a club, we have held night navigation sessions at Newbold Comyn in an orienteering format, usually as part of our Skills for the Hills course. Nevertheless, any member who would like to try out orienteering is more than welcome to come along, whether that be to set a time or simply have some fun.  There is also an on-campus orienteering course on MapRun. See bottom-left photo from last year's night nav.

Our main goal would be to field a relay team for BUCS, the annual inter-university competition held in Spring. This year, it is being held by Oxford University in some excellent open and not-so-open woodland near Reading.