Orienteering at Night (as opposed to Night Orienteering)

[graeme]

It looks like the Scottish Night Champs is heading for a record entry. Still some maps available if you don't want to miss the biggest night race of the year!

Which got me thinking about Orienteering at night, which in Edinburgh's "Fight with the Night" includes lit streets and parks. It does seem to be a boom area up here - over 100 at one midweek local event. OK, it's not real "night Orienteering" like the Deeside people have
but somehow seems more appealing than the "best practice" Club Activity Nights in a sportshall.

Anybody else seeing this?

[seabird]

Couldn't agree more.

A little bird tells me that at least one RDO has given a club the go ahead to use these as part of a Club Activity Night schedule. i suspect there may be a posting regarding this soon to appear!

[NeilC]

at least one RDO has given a club the go ahead to use these as part of a Club Activity Night schedule

Didn't realise that we needed permission. We generally leave the sportshall for the streets of Brighton every other week for some sort of steet "race". Technically they are activities and not events and so no levy is payable and we don't keep any records of times etc.

Now in its 4th year the Kent Night Cup still uses a mixture of street and forest events. Difficult to see any pattern - the majority of hard core members go to both. A few only go to the street events and a few others (usually with injury problems) avoid the streets. The street events are all one hour score type using a 1:10000 map with basically just roads, alleys footpaths and parks mapped. I sense that some people are finding that Tonbridge (for example) is starting to look rather familar now so perhaps it's time to think about 1:5000 maps and testing more detailed navigation.

[Sunlit Forres]

Sports Hall club nights have never particularly inspired me either. Lamp post map memory might make an interesting club training night without having to put out controls. Sections of map stuck to lamp posts showing where to run to find the next one. Lighting provided by the council so head torches optional.

[Zokko!]

Our sports hall club night has been going for a couple of years and attracts mid 20s in numbers every week. Our night street league (10 midweek events spread fortnightly through the winter, new areas added each year as well as old favourites) is averaging around 60 competitors and is growing more and more popular. Indeed the high numbers are making it more difficult to find new venues (usually pubs, sometimes sports clubs) with enough room for the socialising afterwards.

Now our RDO is encouraging a second club night in a different population centre, which we are a bit reluctant to support because there are few active orienteers living close by. No doubt it will go ahead but I for one see these "initiatives" as less sustainable than a regular local event program.

[andy]

Orienteering at night, which in Edinburgh's "Fight with the Night" includes lit streets and parks. It does seem to be a boom area up here - over 100 at one midweek local event.

was that at KB though? Got about 6 on a very wet and windy Cortorphine Hill!

looking forward to Scottish Nights

[redkite]

swoc do about 6 night street events a year and get a hard core of regulars, normally about 20. In fact there is one this evening. start and finish at a pub.

We have tried other club night events such as a run, but this has proved the most popular. controls are normally fire hydrants.

[Big Jon]

Back in the stone age (well the late 70's) Gramp mapped about 6 or 8 areas of Aberdeen and had street events - you wrote down telephone box numbers and hydrant numbers etc. Good fun and very easy to map/organise. More fun than a gym hall "orienteering" session I would have thought!

[SeanC]

I don't think there is any reason why the "club night" couldn't just be street O or park O if you could find a weekly venue that was in the middle of these areas. It might be worth seeing if you can push the boundaries (of the club night funding) a bit and make the weekly venue a pub/leisure centre to meet up for sharing transport and food afterwards, with the first part of your event a short drive to a start position elsewhere in the city, or an "away" trip to a forest night O?

The requirement that it must be every week is a pain though.

[binman]

Back in the stone age (well the late 70's) Gramp mapped about 6 or 8 areas of Aberdeen and had street events - you wrote down telephone box numbers and hydrant numbers etc. Good fun and very easy to map/organise. More fun than a gym hall "orienteering" session I would have thought!

What goes around... Gramp are seriously looking at doing this in the autumn/spring interregnum between Summer Evening and Night Series in order to have an event of some description every Wednesday evening through the year. With Urban mapping (at least at basic level) getting simpler all the time, it should be relatively simple to generate the maps. I can think of at least half a dozen parts of our small city to map just off the top of my head, so there's plenty of new 'terrain' out there if we're imaginative enough to find it.