British Orienteering Championships 2017
Sat 6 May - Long Distance Race at High Dam; TrailO at Lakeside
Sun 7 May - Relays at Summer House Knott
BOC 2017 – A dry weekend in the Lake District!
Contrary to the usual stormproof gear the weekend of BOC 2017 was a case of sun hats, sun cream and deck chairs! With weeks of dry weather, the marshes and streams of High Dam, just to the west of Lake Windermere had all but vanished and it was possible to complete a course without wet feet. A small group of WIM’s made the long trip and assembled under the club banner adjacent to the tent of Alison's club, Walton Chasers before heading out into the challenging competition area which towered above the assembly area at Finsthwaite.
High Dam is high! The walk and climb to the start got you into the mood of pending exhaustion and as soon as you left the start the T/D5 kicked in! Most of the area is undulating and semi-open with numerous ridges, crags and re-entrants that combine to make your brain ache! Underfoot it you are an M21 your could run but mostly competitors could be seen plodding through tussocks, heather and bracken. You had to take precise compass bearings and stick to them, always aware that there were few catching features should precise navigation fail. Purposeful yet slow progress was the order of the day until we emerged on the steep final hillside with views of Windermere and the Assembly area. The final section should have been fast but even here if you lost concentration for a few seconds trouble emerged and the headless chickens put in an appearance!. A 350m level run in made things exciting and for both Keith Henderson and Gillian Cross both being placed third in each of their classes the Individual day was a great achievement. Competing against the best in the UK, Sarah Horsler also had a very good run being placed 11th in W16A.
High Dam, Course 22
During the day on Saturday, the BOC Trail O Champs were held about 2 miles away at Lakeside and Dick Keighley had great success in the Paralympic class winning a Silver medal.
One of the pleasures of Major events of this type, is the chance to meet and chat to friends from all over the country and the ‘Garden Party’ atmosphere continued with the Relays the next day about a mile up the road. The weather was if anything even better, ideal for running and for the organisers a huge relief that all the parking nightmares were non-existent with dry grassing fields and no mud in sight.
WIM had only two teams entered to compete on a wooded hill called Summerhouse Knot. It was an elongated ridge again with ribs of rock but the vegetation was less of a challenge being for much of the area open deciduous woodland. Some people chose to use the new SIAC contact-less punching system which was not without issues but for the WIM group the terrain proved to be mostly runnable and Gillian, Martin and Keith achieved 5th position in the M/W70 class.
It is always a revelation to compete in the north and encounter the much more physical terrain that is normal for them totally unlike our benign local heath and woodland areas, but the results show that WIM can hold its own with all comers .
John Warren
We are grateful to Wendy Carlyle, Laurence Johnson and John Warren for the photographs
"Getting lost is just another way of saying 'going exploring.'" (Justina Chen)