Crash Course

Partly because I am still emotionally in Zermatt and partly because it's been an awful soggy afternoon, today's blip is a crash course in orienteering before I finally put away my maps from last week's event...

So here are my six maps from the six day event. If you know nothing about orienteering you can see my class (D55 - for women/damen 55-60); the scale of each map (e.g. 1:7500 or 1:10 000); the detail of the terrain on each map e.g. boulders, re-entrants, platforms, water features, crags, trees, glaciers (!) etc and the courses I had to follow. Basically you are set off at minute intervals, you pick up your map and have to navigate using it and a compass around the different points (controls) on the course. The triangle marks the start and the double circle is the finish. At each control there is an orienteering kite, with an individual identifying number, and a computerised box. On your finger you wear a computer chip in a specialist SI card. To prove you have visited the control, you stick the chip into the box and it records your time. At the end of the course you download the information on your SI card and receive a print out of your results (stapled to each of my maps). You can then compare your performance with all the others on your particular course.

I know you are bored rigid by this point but think yourself lucky, I could have uploaded this!