M/W 21 turnout.

[Angry Haggis]

Returning to the original question of where were all the M/W21's....

For the first time in ages work left me with an opportunity to go orienteering this Sunday. However, the closest events were 80-90miles away in either North Gloucestershire or Norfolk. (I'm currently based in West London)

This Sunday was rather unusual in that there were no events near London. I noticed this too - no events were showing as close by on the fixtures map. Virtually every other weekend in the year, outside of the off-season, there is an event within easy distance of London.

e.g. This weekend Pippingford Park (closing date today) 32 miles away, next weekend the Concorde Chase 29 miles away, the weekend after the OO cup is 44 miles way. And then there's the unmissable Cambridge City Race.

I reckon London is actually the best place in the country to live, to get to orienteering events. There may not be that many great areas in London itself, but there's a host of clubs and three regions (SEOA, SCOA and EAOA) nearby, each of which is almost guaranteed to put at least one event on each week. The transport network makes it pretty easy to get out to them too.

Finally, both SLOW and LOK have a street race on soon - Wimbledon on Tuesday and Hampstead on the 22nd.

Other than the excellent City Race, what has London got to offer our sport?....The obvious answer is population - specifically M/W21's moving to London to earn their fame and fortune before moving out of the rat race (no link intended) to the countryside to raise their families (blindingly stereotypical I know but still largely true).

Surely there could easily be one or two events within an hour of (or indeed within) London every Sunday. With the number of clubs in/around London this wouldn't be too onerous....would it? To paraphrase the old saying, "If M/W21's will not come to orienteering, orienteering will come to the M/W21's". I'm not for a moment saying all orienteering should be city based, but if you want to grab their attention - go grab them! When they've seen the sport we can then tempt the new-comers further afield.

I've been to some of SLOW's mid-week evening street events - but to be honest I'm usually too knackered after work. What has happened to all the "traditional" Sunday events? I see there we a couple of local Saturday events (one of them having a short blue?? Surely that's a green!....I digress). Sadly my Friday nightshift put paid to Saturday O. I'm not saying all M/W21's work Friday nights, but I guess a good number of them were probably down the pub. Are Saturday O events in greater demand down here than Sundays? Is that in response to the views of existing orienteers? This M21 would prefer Sundays.

[SeanC]

T5 wrote

"Surely there could easily be one or two events within an hour of (or indeed within) London every Sunday. "

It depends what you mean by London. If you mean the suburbs you are much nearer to many sunday events. If you mean inner london you are less well served.

Traditionally sunday events are district and regional events, and the majority of suitable areas are in the green belt or beyond. Local events are a more recent phenomenium and have taken the time slots left over after the regionals and district events, hence local events are mainly saturday events during the core orienteering season, but are on a sunday in late June and July (the FROLICS series). Putting more London local events on a sunday will be difficult as potential organisers and many of the competitors needed to make local events financially viable want to go to the district and regionals, but with the demise of the district event maybe more free sundays will appear.

[Gross]

If you can get out to Heathrow, Gatwick or Stanstead there are plenty of events within 1 or 2 hours of London.....

I can get to BOC with in 3 hours of Vilnius

[EddieH]

Ah but what about the time getting through security at the airport?

[Gross]

carry only hand luggage and sign up for IRIS recognition....

[SeanC]

I don't think the subject of unfashionable orienteering kit has been raised in this thread. Is this because kit has improved in the last few years?

But the first view of our sport is likely to be a club or association website. I don't think anyone expects perfect websites, but some of the images could be offputting. Perhaps these pictures could be updated with the many good action photos of orienteers of different ages in better kit (eg. the ones from this year's BOF calendar).

The worst case is where the only pictures on a site are passport style pictures of committee members. These mugshots have a tendancy to make people look wierd and in any case there are few juniors or M/W 21's on most committees. If a picture says 1000 words, then such a site says that orienteering is not for the under 40's!

[NeilC]

As one of the clubs involved in the BOF/Steve Vernon participation project we specifically set out to target the 16-35 age group. Not an easy task of course but we already do pretty well attracting families via our regular Sat club league and we didn't want to go down the schools league approach. Our strategy has been to rebrand our weekly club night as adventure running rather than orienteering - indeed the club night website http://www.adventurerunning.org.uk/ doesn't even mention the parent club! Too early to say whether the strategy will work although we are seeing a few new younger faces coming along and we are having fun of a Tuesday evening.

[geomorph]

As one of the clubs involved in the BOF/Steve Vernon participation project we specifically set out to target the 16-35 age group. Not an easy task of course but we already do pretty well attracting families via our regular Sat club league and we didn't want to go down the schools league approach. Our strategy has been to rebrand our weekly club night as adventure running rather than orienteering - indeed the club night website http://www.adventurerunning.org.uk/ doesn't even mention the parent club! Too early to say whether the strategy will work although we are seeing a few new younger faces coming along and we are having fun of a Tuesday evening.

Excellent

- its going to take a lot of work though to have a balanced programme covering all the interests (especially the MM in Hove. - yes I know you've got some steep hills locally)

It also shows how hard it is to give a short blurb to introduce the purpose of the club when the umbrella covers so many variations.
Is the off-road emphasis wrt to road/track the strategy you've agreed on?
Does this then make it difficult to to convey the urban orienteering message?