HHJOS Training - Report by Miranda Leaf ( W12 )

Last Saturday my Dad took me to the HH Junior Orienteering Squad training day at Stanborough Park near Welwyn Garden City. It was good fun.

Carol was the trainer and started us off straight away with the first activity – a control description exercise, where we had to match descriptions on paper against features on the map. I got them all right. Then we did a line exercise – following a line on the map and marking the position of any controls we found. This was a good way to make sure we went to exactly the right place, rather than just hoping to find a control.

Next came the best bit for me – the fine navigation exercise. We had a very big scale map of 6 trees, with a very bendy line drawn around them, like really twisty roller coaster! In turn, we had to run following this bendy line, with our Dads and Mums marshalling to make sure we didn’t cheat. It felt like running a ‘join the dots’ puzzle, but I really had to concentrate to know which way to go.

Finally, we were split into teams of 3 and did a relay called ‘Odds and Evens’. One team member had to stay at the start while the other two went to an odd or an even numbered control. When one returned, the person who was at the start did the next control, and so on until all controls had been visited. My team came second.

It’s great that Carol organises training, because my school doesn’t do Orienteering and it’s helping me learn new skills. I would certainly recommend other junior orienteers to go to these training events.