ORIENTEERING OVERSEAS
Experiences of an older Orienteer Hugh Moore - edited talk to the 2007 Orienteering ACT End-of-Year dinner. I’ve been asked to give some advice for older competitors travelling overseas so they can avoid some of the things that have happened to me.
What’s different for an older orienteer? •N o one has selected you. There were no selection races. You don’t have to impress any selectors, do any special training, or any training at all. •N o one cares how you perform. It doesn’t matter if you perform badly. And you will perform badly. •Y ou can compete in any events you like, or not compete if you don’t feel like it. •N o one is sponsoring you. This is not so good as you have to pay for everything yourself. What to Expect:
TRAVELLING Expect to lose your bags at some stage (my stories are mild compared with some). • I n 2007 I lost my bags both going to and leaving Aberdeen. Luckily they were found and returned to me by SAS the next day on each occasion. •T wo years ago British Airways lost my bags in London in transit to Aberdeen. After two days they found them in London, but took another three days to get them from London to Aberdeen! •O thers, like Eric Wainwright & Dagmar, and Alan Sargeant, lost their bags for the duration of their trips this year!! Other Bag Adventures •N ever travel with more than two bags. I started with three bags in 2001, but one was quickly taken away from me to provide for the poor of Vilnius after I briefly took my eyes off it at an Internet café. The locals probably didn’t find the items very useful, it was all my O gear. And I don’t think they were orienteers. •N ever leave your bag out of sight on the overnight ferry between Sweden and Finland. As I sat down at the restaurant a kind fellow passenger quickly came to warn me that someone was interfering with my pack. I found a young Scandinavian, blind drunk, with his pants and undies around his ankles, trying to get into my pack. The zips had defeated him so I rescued the pack intact. Don’t Expect it’s Easy to Follow Directions in Foreign Lands - for starters they’re usually in a foreign language:
•D on’t rely on downloading directions to hotels from the Internet, at least not in Italy. When I eventually found my cheap hotel after wandering around Milan in the middle of the night for hours the owners said of course the instructions on the Internet were wrong! What to Avoid (this is important) •6 0 bed dormitories in Youth Hostels. Why? A greatly increased risk of getting little or no sleep, from people snoring, from squeaky beds, from drunken partygoers and from amorous couples (note the squeaky bed issue). •E ven if it looks cheaper than camping at major O events avoid hard floor accommodation in gymnasiums and school classrooms – for the same reasons. •D on’t accept lifts in Ambulances in Austria; they’re not free! And absolutely avoid being airlifted by helicopter, that’s even less free (as Graham Fortune can tell you). Expect any outstanding debt to be pursued with Germanic persistence, and the insurance company to find something significant in the fine print •D o not do sprint reps in bare feet at Bangkok airport, no matter how stir crazy you feel after days without exercise on planes. Calf muscles and achilles will take ages to recover!! •W atch out for time differences. I thought I was going to surprise my wife by meeting her a day early in Scotland, and was confused when I found she was extremely angry. She demanded to know why I hadn’t turned up that morning. I thought we were due to meet the next day!
COMPETING Don’t Expect to Do Well, because: •T he terrain will be totally different, sometimes unimaginably so. •M ap symbols won’t necessarily mean the same things as in Australia. •T he other competitors will all be about twice as fast as you. And they don’t need to stop to read the map, even in the middle of a marsh. • There will be ten times as many competitors at every event. •T hey will all have been orienteering for twice as long as you have. • You will make at least twice as many mistakes as usual. •Y our mistakes will be at least twice as bad. And sometimes very, very bad. • I t will be wet most of the time, and sometimes all of the time, especially in Scotland. Some other examples: •N othing can prepare you for complex rock in Finland, say no more!! •R unning across mossy slopes and through thigh deep marshes uses muscles in a way that is unnatural for an Australian. It takes months to adapt and much longer than the time you will be overseas.
• I n Italy, due to poor signage, I ended up travelling back the way I had come, on an express train, which took me longer to get off.
Maps are different – often leading to confusion, because:
• I n Denmark I had to choose which side of the road to catch a bus, as the route went both left and right. I had a 50/50 chance. Of course I got it wrong, so I had to wait another hour for a bus.
• They map bare rock as open yellow in Sweden,
30 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER MARCH 2008
• They don’t map fences in New Zealand. • They don’t map minor powerlines in Sweden. •A reas mapped as semi-open are to be avoided in Europe as they are usually young regrowth or something equally horrid to get through. continued on page 29
