Today was our first orienteering event of the trip, but with starts in the early evening, we didn’t have to go anywhere until 4pm. So we declared it a catchup day – slept in, then whiled away the time sitting in the sun, doing a few emails, and generally not much of anything, until it was time to dig out our orienteering gear and head off.  Northern hemisphere compass? Check.  SIAC stick? Check. Magnifier? Check. Gaiters and O shoes? Check.

It was sunny and mid-20s, perfect weather. Ian’s start time was just before 6pm, and mine was an hour later at 7pm. I was worried about being out in the forest at dusk, so decided to wear my head torch, just in case.

The event centre for all three days is in the small village of Riniken, 20 minutes drive through the Jura hills. In the highly efficient manner we expect of the Swiss, we were parked in no time, and heading up the small hill to the school.  This is a regional event, fairly low key, with about 650 participants.  But what an arena!  In the school courtyard they have set up rows of bench seats and tables, some in the sun and others under a huge marquee.  There are stalls selling fries, BBQ, drinks, cakes, and crepes. There are toilets, showers and change rooms.  Download and results are indoors. There are hot and cold running volunteers all decked out in the same distinctive shirt. It’s an organiser’s dream, and we really need to pull our socks up back home.

The arena – home for the next 3 days

Hmm, will I have pasta, fries, or crepes?

Crepes!

Cake stall

Table decorations

Big screen for watching WOC relays tomorrow

We settled in with the rest of the Aussie contingent, our friends Philly and Stephen from Melbourne, and David and Toni from the ACT. A South African orienteer, now living in Switzerland, wandered over and asked if we know Bernie.  We told him that we see Bernie 3 or 4 times a week. It’s a small world. Despite not speaking the language, we quickly felt at home.  It was at this point that we noticed the tables were decorated with tiny pine cones surrounding tiny O flags. Nice touch!  The marquee covers a large screen, being set up so the Swiss can cheer on their WOC relay teams tomorrow.

Enough of this luxury – time to get out into the forest and do some orienteering. Ian, Philly and Stephen all had similar start times, so they headed off while I was left holding the fort. I resisted the urge to devour crepes, and dutifully went off to the start at the allotted time.  I was going to be thinking about those crepes all the way around.

Because of my balance problems, I opted for a B course for these events, and I was the last starter. A quick glance at the map showed me that most of my controls were pretty close to tracks, so I didn’t expect any problems with the navigating. However, deciduous European forest is overgrown and tangly, so getting into the control sites was going to be my challenge, especially with the sun sitting so low, reducing visibility under the forest canopy.  We were on a low hill, the Iberg, criss crossed with nice wide tracks, and the controls were on small contour or erosion features.  Some legs required heading through the forest, while others were best approached via the tracks even if it meant a detour. I was aiming to finish in an hour. Apart from a small error at no 3 (sucked into going to a nearby control that wasn’t mine) and heading down a track that was not mine (quickly realised and fixed), I had no problems other than the physical ones of moving around. I was able to run quite a bit on the tracks especially near the end, although I was starting to feel somewhat light headed by then. I really could have done with a crepe!

After completing the forest section, we had a 1 km walk back to the arena, but we weren’t done – the organisers in their questionable wisdom had decided that we all needed to finish with a “Super Sprint” – switch to a 1:500 scale map of the kinder across the road, put out 8 controls, and see how many orienteers you can bamboozle.  Normally this would have been fun but by now it was 8.15pm, my feet and head hurt, and my heart really wasn’t in it. Oh well.

Here are our maps. Ian got round in 61 minutes, but felt very tired. We both had several names under ours in the results (which for me was a surprise, I expected to be last by quite a margin). I was pleased overall with how it all went, and looking forward to Day 2.

Ian’s course M60

Deb’s course (DB = Womens Moderate)