This was it – the big one, the culmination of two weeks of intense orienteering.  The race of truth.  The moment we’d been training for.  OK perhaps I exaggerate … but World Masters finals don’t come around all that often unless you can afford to travel to Europe.   We’ve had Melbourne in 2002, Sydney in […]

We returned to the same arena for the second qualifying race, though we parked mercifully closer, in amongst the tall fluffy pampas grass which grows in such profusion, and looks amazing with the sun shining on its feathery flowers. We reclaimed our spot on the hill, now dubbed Commonwealth Hill to accommodate the Canadians and […]

1800 or so eager orienteers descended on Woodhill Forest en masse, all seeking a parking position at the head of the queue, to avoid the threat of a 3.5 km walk into the arena.  The forest gates were not unlocked until 8.30am, which was when we arrived.  We sailed past all the earlybirds (which was […]

It’s a tough life … sleep in, leisurely breakfast on the lower deck, watching the water and the fishing boats, and hearing the geese honking as they fly overhead in their V formations.  Head off around midday to the Model event, designed to show us Dune country.  Meander happily through lovely pine forest, visiting controls […]

Our last trip into Auckland! It was a lovely sunny day.  Pete and I wrestled the parking meter system into submission and we headed across the Domain, home to the Auckland Museum.  Last time Ian and I were here was as part of the Coast to Coast Walk – you can hike across New Zealand […]

The first official race of WMOC 2017, the Sprint Qualifier. Most age classes have two heats, and the top 50% in each go through to the A final, leaving the lower 50% to run in the B final.  Everyone has different aims – the speedsters who know they will make the A final have to […]

We left Rotorua behind yesterday morning and drove into the traffic snarls of south Auckland.  After a very slow crawl along the motorway, we skirted across towards the west, leaving the suburbs behind.  Shelly Beach is a tiny spot at the end of a twisting narrow road.  It consists of three roads, a cluster of […]

You’ve got to love an event where you arrive at the arena to discover the following overnight occurrences: A circus has set up camp in the north west corner of the course. Warning: circus not mapped. Please run around it A control has been removed from the course due to “thermal activity”. Visions of pushing […]

Now that the Middle Earth Middle Distance race is officially over, I can confess that we were guilty of visiting the Redwood Treewalk while it was embargoed yesterday.  We hadn’t read the fine print in the program, and we thought the Treewalk would be an interesting thing to do on our day off. It was […]