Another glorious blue sky greeted us as we got ready for our second last orienteering event. This one involved a trip up on the gondola, to the event centre. After that, who knew? The “organisers” (I use that term advisedly) had provided next to no information about the courses. We had to be on the […]

This mornings orienteering event on the 12 Mile map about 12 kms west of Queenstown was supposed to be a low key follow up event after the New Zealand National championships. When Shakespeare’s King Henry was exhorting his troops to once more storm the breach in the  walls of the Castle at Agincourt, little did […]

Our first of three Queenstown events was just a few kms up the road, and Twelve Mile. It was on river flats next to the lake; at least the arena was.  We got the full Kiwi experience, complete with glacial streams to be crossed, scrambly slopes to clamber up and slide down, and gorse bushes […]

We bid a fond farewell to Oamaru, although we couldn’t actually see it thanks to a thick coastal fog. We almost didn’t leave after the Great Car Key Crisis, which involved diving through our discarded rubbish and completely unpacking the rear of the car, in a desperate search for the one thing that stood between […]

Selection trials had been held to determine the coveted place on leg 3 of the DROC womens team. Sarah was already locked into the Moderate leg 1, but Sammy and I had been doing the same course for the last 3 days. Sammy clearly had the edge over me on speed, and her navigation has […]

Todays middle distance New Zealand Orienteering championship was held at Maerewhenua, it is in the opposite direction from yesterday and the walk-in across open farm paddocks and arrival at the arena surrounded by old farm buildings slumbering gracefully in the early autumn light gave us hope that today would be more restful that the Long […]

Less cloud today but dark clouds hovered threateningly, and we packed down jackets, beanies and raincoats – in NZ you need to be prepared for all weathers at any time. Today’s map was highly unpronounceable, but it was in an area called Earthquakes, so it was fair to assume that the terrain had been influenced […]

Should’ve remembered that when the New Zealanders say Long, they mean LOOOOOONG! Everyone’s courses were very tough today, lots of big hills and thick scratchy forest mapped as white (we would map it as mid green).  We were on farmland about 30 kms south of Oamaru, up on a hilltop which would have been very […]

Our first race day dawned fine and sunny, but chilly. We all bounced out of bed at sunup … ok ok, we all dragged ourselves out of bed some time before 10 am.  We began our intense preparations and routines, carefully fine tuning our bodies and minds for what lay ahead.  Simon snoozed on the […]

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 […]