Chris Curtis Web Site

It must be summer. Southdowns Orienteers have come out of the woodlands, where the brambles and bracken are head-high at this time of year, and for the next few months we will be running around parks and adjacent terrain.

In recent years the traditional “Park-Os” have developed into the Sussex sprint series - thanks mainly to Rob Lines’ great organisational skills. The sprint orienteering format uses these areas well, and allows good navigational challenges when the terrain is not as technical or physically demanding as some “classic” areas. The idea is to make competitors go very fast, with tight small-feature navigation on detailed 1:4000 maps. In that context it is very easy, and very costly, to make mistakes like coming along the wrong side of a wall.

I thought the course was excellent. I can’t believe it was the planner’s first (though he says it was!). There were lots of changes of direction and changes of style, from simple straight-line running to obvious features to micro-navigation in a tricky quarry and in a complex parkland and set of buildings. I never felt the interest wane and with 19 controls close together, you had to think all the time.

Well, how did it go?

Better than I feared and a little worse than I hoped! I have missed a lot of orienteering and training recently. I am terribly unfit and out of practice. The last couple of outings I have missed controls or become hopelessly lost at some point. I was very pleased that neither of these things happened. I had a cleanish run apart from being rather vague in the quarry (it was tricky!) and not spotting from the map that there was a path round a building - which meant going up a high embankment and having to go round to find somewhere to climb down when I saw the reality on the ground.

I was terribly slow despite feeling the pace and came back in 41 minutes for 3.5 km - well behind the average but I have been worse.

I thoroughly enjoyed it though - which has not always been true recently. Things should allow more training and orienteering soon so improvement must be on the cards.

It has been ages since I went orienteering (or had much of a training run) and it showed!

It was a glorious morning with bright sunshine and real warmth. The first part of the course took us through open woodland carpeted with bluebells. There is nothing more wonderful in nature than a southern English bluebell wood in May. The planner encouraged us well off the paths to enjoy it more and it was a privilege to be there. The woods were very wet from recent rain, which made the first few controls a little tricky: what the map showed as wet ditches were rushing streams and there were lots of places to be caught in mud. At one point I managed to go knee-deep (literally) into a marsh which was marked on the map but not very visible on the ground.

I made two huge errors both for the same reason. Going to control six, I chose the optimum route to control 11. My eye caught the circle on the map and I was fixed. I had to go from finding 11 (which was not easy from that direction) to six. I did a very similar thing at control 14. I left control 13, but read the map as if I was going from 12 to 14 - I managed to convince myself that the ground agreed with the map until, after quite a long way, I could not pretend any more and had to backtrack because I could not remember if I had visited control 13. Just lack of concentration but these two errors cost me over 20 minutes.

Thankfully, the terrain slowed everyone down, and my performance did not look quite as disastrous as it really was. I was 21st, but was beaten by all the “usual suspects”.

I thought the course was very good. There was a huge variety of terrain and you had to navigate every step - shame I could not keep my head together.

Parham Woods is a very nice area with a lot of variety in a small space, along with some technically tricky ground and more than enough to confuse the unwary.

I was fairly fast to the first control, but was thrown by how wet my route was to the second and spent time trying to avoid getting my feet wet. Once I just decided to run up the flooded ride (and once the water in my shoes had warmed up) it was fine. After that, things were OK, though my navigation was not as sharp as I wanted and I found it a struggle compared with recent events. I did not feel at my best, vaguely ill and out of sorts, but I was around in 52 minutes for 19th place, which was better than I expected.

The woods are still quite wintry in appearance. There were daffodils in places, but no primroses yet. There was a little sunshine, which made a big difference to the cold wind.

It was a glorious morning. The gales overnight had moderated into a strong breeze with bright sunshine and a perfectly clear sky. Ideal conditions for a run on the South Downs - today at Southwick Hill .

There was a steep uphill walk to reach the start, then more uphill to control 1, then it was a matter of running around typical low scrub, into small pockets of woodland and across sheep-nibbled grass. The landscape is very different to our usual orienteering haunts and you needed to concentrate every second. I had to have two tries at control 2, and stop for a comfort break about half way round, but otherwise things went smoothly and reasonably fast. The two minutes I lost, however, took me down at least 9 places to 18th so I missed out on a top ten place. I was not helped by the fact that I had left my new O-shoes behind and was running in an old pair of trainers that were in the car but I was feeling good, even if my gps recorded a record heartrate of 213 after a couple of long uphill runs - against my normal maximum of 190 or so.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I cannot think of anything I would rather have been doing. The wind blew the winter cobwebs away and the sunshine felt very good. Add the views of a deep blue sea a mile or two away and the beauty of the downs landscape and things were just great.

This area is an interesting mixture, hard up against the edge of town. A lot of the area is pasture, with small but intricate areas of woodland, all of which are full off paths and often litter too. There are some nice streams and always plenty of clay and brambles underfoot. It was cloudy but dry and mild, except that the wind took the pleasure out of it.

I seemed to set off at a cracking pace, which I could not sustain, but the navigation worked well so I was never lost. The course was very well planned. There was enough variation to make every control different and just enough of a challenge. Most importantly, the challenge was in navigating - once you found the feature, you found the control.

I finished in 48 minutes for 13th. This is my highest ever placing on a green course so I am well pleased.

We had some winter sunshine today - almost strong enough to feel a little warmth - and with foxglove and bluebell leaves emerging from the ground everywhere, you can almost believe that winter will not last forever.

Rivers Wood is a classic southern English woodland. There is a mixture of plantation and less organised forest with trees of many kinds and ages. As the name suggests, there are some deep valleys with large streams. As the area is on clay, the valleys can be steep and the ground heavy underfoot so the area can be quite physical.

The green course was very good today. The first controls were simple enough and close together, calling for the confidence to apply straightforward navigation and go as fast as you could. Then things became varied, with some longer legs, changes of direction and lots of route choices to make. I never felt that I was “slogging around” - with 17 controls you were always onto the next challenge.

With a heavy cold I was never going to be very fast, but pace was reasonable compared with most and I beat one or two that I have been struggling to catch up with recently. I thoroughly enjoyed being out in the sunshine and felt better for the run.