It’s been almost five years, but Dipidydoo is finally having an Orienteering adventure Overseas!  Well three quarters of us are – I’m travelling with Pete and Ilze, while Ian is looking after things on the home (and streeto) front.  This time we’re joined by Pam and Peter.  We’re in the North Island of New Zealand, where we’ll be competing in the Oceania Championships – a series of Sprint races in Taranaki and Auckland.  The racing starts in a couple of days’ time, and we have something like 9 events.

We were reminiscing about previous visits to NZ, most notably the notorious Rotorua Sprint, where a) a circus sprang up overnight in the middle of the course, causing a huge last minute panic by the organisers, and a long diversion for the runners; and b) a control that was beside the lake, ended up in it, after heavy rainfall.  Normally they’d just send us into the water and tell us to get wet and deal with it – but this particular lake is thermal, with “keep out or boil to death” signs everywhere.  So we just waved to the control from a safe distance.  Our last visit to NZ was back in 2019, when we travelled over for Easter, and were based in Oamaru – steam punk capital – and Queenstown.  It’s good to be back, finally.