Orienteering

✓National Glass II Lost 2 —4 ✓Yorkshire General II Won 4 —2 ✓Rowntrees Won 6 —0 ✓Armstrongs II Lost 14-44 ✓Clifton Hospital II Won 4 —2

Regular team members were C. A. Clegg (Board 1 (Board 2), C. W. Maher (Board 3), J. Demades (Board 1. R. Ross, R. E. Craig.

Also played: P. M. Brooker, J. H. Larcombe, P. S Dodd, E. J. Atha, S. D. M. Yates.

Final League position: 8th out of 14 teams.

SUMMER TERM

This term the Inter-House Competition was held and this was won by 1st ROUND SEMI-FINALS FINALS Dronfield Manor Grove Dronfield Manor 1 ), I. P. Heavens 4), W. J. Adler, . Spencer, K. C.

Temple

School House Temple

Rise 1 Queen's Temple j

Queen's IDE

MANOR

C.A.C.

ORIENTEERINNG

`Quality rather than quantity' sums up the present state of orienteering. Christopher Hirst has continued to enhance his reputation in orienteering circles with some remarkable runs in classes way above his own age group, and high spots of the past year must have been his selection for British Junior Tours of Norway and Denmark during the summer of 1974, and West Germany in June 1975.

Others come and go, and of these Charles Brown deserves congratulations for winning the British Orienteering Federation's Gold Award. D.H.H.

THE BRITISH JUNIOR ORIENTEERING TOUR, 1974

The British Junior Tour, specifically designed to give young orienteers an opportunity for running on the Continent, spanned a period of 19 days this year, leaving on July 15th for Norway, with the competition being the six-day international, the `Sorlandsgaloppen', and returning from Denmark on August 2nd. The group of boys and girls which I was lucky enough to join consisted of 30 orienteers from all over Britain: from Newcastle, Bristol, London, Swansea, Kilmarnock, Gordonstoun and 33

many other places. Four Tour Leaders came with us--themselves accomplished orienteers--to organise us; the trip was as much of an experience for them as for ourselves.

On Monday 15th July, Neville Myers (of Archbishop Ho'gate's School) and myself boarded the train to Huntingdon, where we were met by a Tour minibus which took us to Harwich to rendezvous with the other bus. Our boat, which was two hours in sailing, gave us a smooth passage to Kristiansand, a port on the southernmost tip of Norway. We arrived at our accommodation in a school at Ve, eight miles out of Kristiansand on Tuesday afternoon, and that evening sampled our first Norwegian food—in a Chinese restaurant!

For the next three days we ran on training courses using our first Norwegian map--which itself was confusing to our untrained eyes—and then on Saturday took part in the first day's competition of the Sorlandsgaloppen. Despite the fact that prizes were being given up to 24th place in each class, no one on the Tour managed to collect a trophy—we had enough trouble completing our respective courses let alone winning things! The next day's competition took place in a more English-like forest and two boys--one in the 15-year-olds' class and one in my own 16-year-olds' class--ran very admirably to collect trophies: Staffordshire pottery mugs! The next day of competition was on Tuesday, so on Monday we returned to the second day forest and ran our courses again. None of us got anywhere near the times of the winners of the previous day, even at a second attempt.

On the third I had probably the worst run of my life: I managed to get lost three times and finished second to last, taking one and a half hours to complete a 4 km. course. After the day's competition we loaded up our minibuses and moved up the east coast to Stavern, a village near the port of Larvik. This was our base for the last three days of competition, the only incident being that, to the annoyance of the Scottish and Welsh boys on the Tour every member had been entered for the competition as running for the "English Orienteering Federation"! On one of the relaxation days a trip to Oslo was fitted in and we spent the day in small groups as we pleased. A friend and I visited no less than five museums, including the Kon-tilci raft, the Viking longships and Nansen's polar vessel, Fram.

On Monday 29th July we left Larvik and sailed across the Skagerrak to Fredrikshaven, in Denmark. On arrival there we set off in the minibuses for Arhus, Denmark's second city. We reached our destination in the early evening and settled in at the international Youth Hostel, a place which was definitely less than ideal for accommodation and which was much less comfortable than some of our own hostels.

We had two days of orienteering in Denmark, one of which was in a forest used by competitors in the World Championships for training. We challenged and soundly beat a local orienteering club in its own training forest and on Thursday 1st August set off for Esbjerg in the minibuses. We had a peaceful return journey by boat-18 hours from Esbjerg to Harwich and then we gradually split up. First we were together, then our numbers slowly decreased until York Station when I was alone, remembering the past two and a half weeks and wondering how they all managed to pass so quickly.