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Long legs and contortions 
Back in June, a group of Happy Herts ventured to Norway, to take part in the Norsk O-festival (Norwegian O-festival), a three day event held this year in Southern Norway not too far from Oslo. The news that our usual summer trip to the Shamrock O-ringen would not be possible this year sent us frantically scuttling through the orienteering calendar for June looking for an alternative event. The lack of the Shamrock last year had sent us to Sweden, this year we thought we might try Norway, given that the Norwegian O-festival was taking place over the final weekend in June, not too far from Oslo. Back in January, this seemed like a good idea; we would have plenty of practice before we went to Norway; with all those major events in May and June we should be fit and ready to tackle a challenging event. Then Foot and Mouth struck and we found ourselves pottering around Hertfordshire towns looking for lamp-posts. As a result we were none of us in sparkling form and had rather forgotten what real orienteering was all about. Having flown on Ryanair last year to an airport not particularly close to the advertised destination (Stockholm), we stretched credibility further by flying to an airport that was not even remotely close to Oslo. Fortunately, as in Sweden, the airport was the 'right' side of Oslo at Sandefjord, and only 50km from the event centre at Skien, although we did feel rather sorry for those passengers who were making the three-hour bus journey to Oslo. Even our 50km began to seem a long way when crawling along at the maximum speed allowed (80km per hour).
All three days finished in an ice stadium at Skien, which meant we could enjoy hot showers in the sports centre after our runs and lounge around in the sun eating food from the excellent snack bar set up close to the finish. As a result, the courses on all three days had to pass through part of the forest adjacent to the stadium. The organisers got round this problem by starting the courses in different parts of the forest on days one and two so that we didn't find ourselves re-running the same legs. So for the short race on the Friday afternoon, we found ourselves heading off to the far east of the map and starting by the side of the local airfield. The terrain for most of the course was rather like Rowney Warren (sorry if that means nothing to some of you), which came as something as a disappointment - fly half way across Europe to run on Rowney. The final part of most of the courses took us round the side of the stadium, through a corridor of grotty forest with orange-standard controls. We did rather wonder, as we set off for our accommodation, whether we had put too much faith in the ability of all Scandanavian countries to provide high quality forests all the time. We need not have worried. On Saturday we were plunged into the southern part of the map, which was hilly, tough underfoot and full of deep, steep sided ravines. All the longer courses had a leg of around 2.5 kilometres across this area, which required careful route choice and some accurate navigation; see the route choices of Mark Adams, Jon Marsden and Ian Marsden on pages 10 and 11. Our times were all pretty long on the Saturday, but we felt that we had been suitably challenged. After the event we travelled 70 kilometers north to visit the stave church at Heddal, a good example of a typical Norwegian wooden church, although Heddal has only recently been returned to its original form after some rather insensitive 'improvements' in the 19th century.
Sunday's relay featured two rival HH teams in the Kombi class, chosen because it had four legs and a lax entry requirement that meant we could all have a run and have one competitive team. The start and finish were both in the stadium, so we got to visit the intricate hill just to its south that we had encountered at the end of Saturday's courses, as well as an area of complex valleys that was reminiscent of forests in North Yorkshire, but without the brashings and brambles. The competitive team was duly beaten by the also-rans, but we wont' mention names. There were no outstanding performances, but we all finished every day and proved that we hadn't forgotten how to orienteer, or at least not entirely. Again, it became clear why Scandinavian orienteering is so strong. Here was a large forest, of National Event or British Champs quality, on the outskirts of a large town, with easy access and wonderful on-site facilities. So what of the contortions. These result from the orienteering equivalent of Murphy's Law, which arises from the use of EMIT punching and states that whichever way you approach the control, it will be necessary to turn your hand through 180 degrees in order to line up the e-card with the block on the stake. To prove this, here are Tim Hall and Keith Marsden attempting to dislocate their elbows at the last control on Saturday.
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