From Vice Chairman, Gavin:

Joni Mitchell was singing Big Yellow Taxi on the radio the other day. Part of the lyrics are: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” this certainly resonated about our Sport this year. Being the creative bunch we are, we have learnt to adapt, with Maprun becoming a large part of our orienteering. There have been few and far proper orienteering races and when I’ve been able to get to those I have been extremely appreciative of the people that made it happen. As can be seen by the many words both spoken and written about our event at Agglestone.

I’ve grown into this creative mood and hence attended Wessex and Wimborne’s three-day multi event this weekend: Queens & Kings Park maprun on Saturday, Avon Heath maprun on Sunday and the Upton Night League race Monday evening. All great fun, Avon Heath was especially pleasant getting out into a proper orienteering area. Maprun League Results have been published after Kings and Queens. As with all new ideas such as maprun, you need to adapt. As I get older I think I need more reminder lists: Avon Heath was a ‘maprun’ so I just turned up (in proper O gear) and ran. Part way round I thought “would probably have been a good idea to bring a compass”! Again for the Score event Monday night half way round I realised I had my Garmin set to pause every time I stopped running – which is the usual set up for running training, but useless if you need to know elapsed time. Well that’s my excuse for being early anyway. Alan Blanchflower had planned the perfect course with Dan Cope collecting all the controls with 18 seconds to spare. See the results here. 

These strange times make it more difficult to socialise and welcome our new or newish members. Particularly at night with a mask on! Welcome to the Ziolko and Ostrowska families. We must make more effort to say hi to these newbies and ensure they get as good an experience as possible. A number of our newer members will not know me, but I hope to make their acquaintance as soon as possible and welcome them to Wessex OC. This is the third time I’ve joined Wessex (don’t ask!). Hopefully for good – if they’ll have me for that long. If you don’t know me I’ve been around for a while – December will see me reach 50 years of O. Come up and say hello sometime. Don’t forget that this sport depends on its volunteers. Please help where ever possible and don’t think that because you’re new that doesn’t apply to you either. Lets face it I’ve only been with the club for 10 months and am now Vice Chairman! May you always run in sunlit forest.

Gavin.