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As we all know, vegetation comes in three different thicknesses.

• Pale Green is – Slow Run;
• Middle Green is – Walk;
• Dark Green is – Fight, or Impenetrable, or Impassable.

Each description is normally preceded by the word “forest”. The ‘slow run’ and ‘walk’ colours may also be in stripes indicating that progress in the direction of the stripe is runnable. This is generally labelled ‘runnable in one direction’ and we all know how unreliable this one can be. It is occasionally found in ‘fight’ areas.

I’m not going to mention the various vertical green screens in this article as it’s really a separate subject.

Each of the three green type areas can have a dotted edge to it, or not, to indicate that it is a distinct vegetation boundary. Where there is no dotted edge, it is assumed that the vegetation boundary is indistinct. Distinct vegetation boundary dots may also go through solid areas of all three colours, generally depicting a distinct change of tree type within the block.

What use can we make of these markings to aid our orienteering passage? The dark green of ‘fight’ can be the most useful, especially when it is juxtapositioned alongside a ‘white’ RUN area. In the south, this is frequently rhododendrons or gorse and generally easily spotted. Dark green dots are usually bushes and can be very helpful. Even the edges of indistinct ‘fight’ against the ‘white’ are generally easy to spot and to run along. Too many ‘dot’ bushes are the reverse, as you can get lost amongst them when it becomes impossible to identify each one. In general terms, ‘fight’ is a very helpful navigational aid except perhaps where it adjoins a ‘walk’ area with indistinct joining.

‘Fight’ is always ‘fight’ in any surveyor’s depiction, but ‘slow run’ and ‘walk’ are very much a matter of individual judgement. One man’s ‘run’ is another man’s ‘walk’ and, as in marking an exam paper you have severe markers and lenient markers, we have surveyors who mark vegetation over-severely and those that understate it. One often hears ‘that green stuff was run all the way’, or ‘much of that white area should have damned well been green!’. Thus it is that runners should really check this out early on in their run, before deciding that they can use the coloured boundaries as navigational features, or of course decide whether they would wish to enter therein, in view of the surveyors interpretation of runability.

A ‘dotted’ vegetation boundary is almost always a good thing to navigate along, even where the dotted line is across a ‘white’, ‘run’ area as a change of tree type is pretty easy to see, unless of course its winter, where one deciduous tree may look much like any other without its leaves on.

Light green slow run areas rarely have dotted edges and are the most difficult to interpret and a surveyor’s attempt at defining the need to put it in is very varied. To many there is no significant difference between just running and ‘slow’ running, especially amongst the ageing competitors, so we (oops, there I said it!) scarcely notice the difference. In fact, very few will try to navigate along a pale green boundary unless it is ‘dotted’ against the white.

This leaves the middle green, ‘walk’ colouration. For me, the boundaries of ‘walk’ are normally just as good as fight and can be used to navigate along. The ‘going’ within the middle green area is, again for me, often just as fighty as the ‘fight’ areas.

The means of using these vegetation boundaries to aid navigation is very varied, but following the boundary in the lighter coloured area seems most sensible. Bends, especially sharp bends in a vegetation boundary, make good attack points, but as always when leaving a bend, be it a track or vegetation boundary, care is needed. The dotted boundary usually makes for a good strong catching feature to run onto without very great care and then to slide along it where quite often there are animal track type paths to aid runability.

So; don’t ignore the vegetation boundaries, as they are very useful navigational aids; beware the use of the pale green ‘undotted’ edges and remember to check early in your run on the surveyor’s interpretation of densities that he has given to the different shades of green.

Richard Arman

Each leg of a course can be broken down to bite-size pieces. Too much information just leads to mistakes – make it easy on yourself.

1. Decide what your attack point is.
2. Work back from there using large obvious features.
3. Now the green light is on.
4. Amber is where you need to verify decisions.
5. Red is where you are closely reading map and land, homing in on information. Example below:

1. From No.1 the attack point to No.2 is the path/track junction.
2. Large obvious features are first path and thicket.
3. Run as fast as I can due north to path and onwards until I see large thicket, I am not interested in fine detail, I am not looking at the map, I am in GREEN mode.
4. From the thicket, still running fast, I check the compass to verify running in northerly direction, hit the path, look for the junction. I can see more information, need to verify path directions – I am in AMBER mode.
5. At path/track junction I slow down. I am relying on the compass now, checking off information – I am in RED mode. I see the first pit to my right with a marker in – I DON’T waste time checking it out, I go straight past it to my control a little further on.

EASY PEASY!

Try it, particularly on longer legs. If you want to improve on your times, try not to waste precious minutes reading the finer detail on the map until you absolutely have to. When you can get your “head down” and run – do it!

John & Liz Cook

If you ever get the opportunity to plan some Orienteering Courses grasp it with both hands. It is almost guaranteed to improve your navigation for future events. I recently planned our Gallopen at Cull-Peper’s Dish and this is a brief resume of how I went about it.

First off you need the map. I was lucky enough to have first go at a new map surveyed by Richard Arman and Bill Brown. With the technological wizardry of O-Cad Bill was able to let me have a draft map before Christmas. Having some prior knowledge of the area I soon decided where the Car Parking had to be. Believe it or not this is often one of the first considerations before you can even think of Start and Finish.

Having fixed the Car Parking I was then keen to keep the Start, Finish and Registration close together to make the logistics of the day easier and to reduce the walk for competitors (I am not usually so considerate but was conscious of the fact that our event was taking place in February when the weather could be anything but kind). I also wanted to maximise the use of the new area around Cull-Peper’s Dish itself so decided on the Start and Finish just north of the road.

I prefer to armchair plan my courses to try and get the shape, distances and technical difficulty about right before I visit the forest. The BOF Guidelines are a good source of reference for the above criteria and, armed with the relevant information I set to with a pencil and piece of string to map out the courses with likely control sites. Having shaped the courses I then spent several hours in the forest visiting the control sites which I had chosen. In several cases this necessitated changing the control used as the feature either wasn’t obvious enough or was not suitable for some other reason.

Having refined the courses I then tagged all the control sites with coloured tape with a code marked on. I prefer to allocate the final control code at this stage if at all possible to avoid having to cross reference. It is in these preliminary stages that your orienteering really improves because it is much harder to find a control site when there is no flag there.

The Controller then becomes involved in both checking and agreeing your course lengths and technical difficulty as well as visiting all the control sites and confirming that you have actually tagged the correct feature. This is vital as anybody can make a mistake. I had actually tagged a wrong pond in Oakers Wood which Roger Harris picked up on and corrected.

Once the courses and sites are approved the next job is to agree the Course Descriptions and allocate punches to each site. This latter job is surprisingly time consuming. It took me most of one Saturday afternoon sorting out the punch canes and bundling them up for each site, marked up accordingly.

Normally one of the real pleasures of planning an orienteering event is being out in the woods early in the morning with nobody else about putting out the controls the day before the event with the Controller coming along behind to check. Unfortunately this year the weather rather spoiled the enjoyment as it threw it down all day and after six and a half hours out in the elements the Controller and I were both soaked to the skin.

We were luckier with the day of the event and a quick check of all but the most remote controls confirmed that we had not suffered any vandalism over night so the first runners could depart. It is always comforting when at least one runner from each course has finished. Comments at the finish vary but they invariably include a large proportion of compliments from people who have enjoyed their run around the course that you have planned for them and it is encouraging how many orienteers manage to gasp a thank you as they finish, even if they are on their last legs.

So don’t be afraid to give it a try. There are plenty of people in the club who would be more than happy to give you some guidance and assist with your first attempt.

Ian Sayer

When we talk about mapping I think we ought to break it down to separate operations. There is the Surveying part and the Cartography part. I won’t say too much about the cartography part as the usage of the well known OCAD system of computerized map production is a skill well beyond me and the execution of it limited to a few really qualified computer experts. We are lucky enough to have one such in our club and he, Bill Brown, also takes part in the surveying process.

Preparation.

We may start from a base of
a. An old orienteering map.
b. An Ordnance Survey map.
c. A photogrametric plot.

This last we have not yet done but in very contoured country it would be a lovely option to be able to use this pre-contoured base.

The base map is scanned into the computer and nice A4 sheets of the area are printed out in ‘shadow’ form to use when actually conducting the survey. Care is taken at this point to ensure that the 100m grid superimposed on the output sheets is corrected to magnetic North. Remember magnetic North is a steadily moving position so this correction is really necessary. We generally use a scale double that of the printed map, eg, 1:7500 if the map is to be 1:15000.

Be prepared to go out in the field in all weather conditions except continuous rain with sensible clothing and a compass, and pencil and rubber. As you are likely to be on your feet for anything up to six hours be comfortable and in our case in this part of the world it seems to mean waterproofs all over, plus bogtrotters. As you are going to need a break take a pack lunch to eat in the car at that time.

The Survey System.

Armed with a sheet of the area in shadow format and with its 100m grid start by addressing one section of the map, for instance a part bordered by good line features like large tracks.

Now the interesting, tedious, tiring, satisfying, decision making time commences. Basically it is a question of covering the area, adding to and altering the base sheet as you pace count always on a compass bearing to pick up every feature to be marked. It is not easy to describe as every situation is different. Perhaps a snapshot of a contrived example could help. So, PC =pace count and C=on a compass bearing.

Thus a. C,PC down major track -find distinct vegetation boundary joining track.
b. C,PC along boundary to see a depression off to one side.
c. C,PC off boundary to depression. Return to boundary where you left it.
d. C,PC along boundary to find a track.
e. C,PC go along track to find a track junction.
f. C,PC from junction back to that depression, thus double checking its position.

And so on, seemingly endlessly !

Whilst doing this you make decisions as you go and mark them on your map. In the above example you would in passing need to:-

1. Decide on the runability of the ground beside the track, on each side of the
   boundary and each side of the track.b. Decide to show the depression as a large or a small one.
   c. Decide what size of tracks you will allocate.
   d. Decide whether to put dots along the boundary or not.

So you can see it’s not just marking things in the right place but deciding things like runability, eg, will you make it ‘slow run’ or ‘walk’, and achieve consistency throughout the area. If two are surveying it is very difficult to get consistency of standards. The decision about what level of detail you put on the map is always a conundrum. Put in too much and it’s cluttered and unreadable, too little and it’s bare and the situation is worstened if the map is to be printed at two different scales !

The 100m grid superimposed on the map is most helpful; in fact we don’t think we could do without it. You do need to have your pacing system well sorted and the compass is generally used in the way of being a sighting compass. You can use a proper sighting compass or even an optical sighting device that reads out distances, if you can afford such a luxury.

After Survey.

Each of the survey sheets is scanned into the computer and superimposed on the existing map from which the survey sheets emanated. Then all the updating, alteration and modification can commence using the OCAD system.( the black art curtain descends at this point)

When this is done each survey sheet is printed out and the author of the survey sheet checks closely to see that all his squiglings have been correctly interpreted and marks up any errors.

Finally a sit down session next to the computer to actually make the noted corrections thus giving the non-cartiographical member of the team an opportunity to see the OCAD system in operation – fascinating in it’s power and complexity !

Conclusion.

The cartographer now completes the map with all the peripheral information and pretties it up for printing.

So you can see the survey business is very much an individual affair and everyone works slightly differently. There is no wrong or right method as long as the final map is sufficiently accurate and actually looks like the area as seen by the orienteer. It is a time consuming business and there are no short cuts, particularly in areas short of features where criss-crossing or going up and down on parallel lines to discover the hidden detail is needed.

The satisfaction comes when you see the completed map in all its beauty, only to be marred by the resentment of the frustrated orienteer who has failed to find his way on the day.

Richard Arman

I prepared these notes for the Social Evening in June. They may be of more general interest around the club. I’m afraid however that you missed making an exhibition of yourselves in running up and down my road over a 100 metre stretch.

1. What is it?

A simple technique to tell you roughly how far you have gone from a chosen start point. It is invaluable if you are going for a bingo pit in an otherwise featureless forest. But mainly you will use it to support your map reading e.g. “This is too early for the stream that I’m looking for so it must be an unmapped ditch.”

2. When to use it?

Some say almost never! Others say whenever possible! So try it and decide for yourself. I use it unconsciously all the time & have to think hard to stop myself doing it. Start off by trying it on level paths to confirm, say, a junction or where you expect a veg boundary to hit the path. Then try it on up/down hill paths. Finally try it on cross country legs. Remember the further you go and the rougher the terrain the more unreliable is pace counting. At first don’t attempt to pace count for more than about 100 double paces on flat paths or 50 double paces in nice clean forest. The big danger of pace counting is that you are tempted to switch off from reading the map. You will have to keep practising pace counting until it becomes just a minor background activity in your mind to your main task of following the map.

3. Technique.

On your map measure how far you want to go. Convert this into double paces for running or walking Run or walk and count off a double pace each time your right (or left) foot hits the ground. Try not to rely on pacing alone, get any other information you can from the map. If, on your way, you see and recognise a feature on the map then re-measure from it and re-start your pace counting.

4. Measuring how far to go.

Most compasses have an edge with a marked centimetre scale. Use this to measure how far to go E.g. 1½ cm You may chose to scratch a scale on the underneath surface of your compass so that you can quickly measure distances on the map without moving the compass. I have done this for years.

5. Convert to double paces.

You need to carry in your head (or stuck on your compass) how many double paces you need to cover 1cm on the map. Let’s say this is 60. (You find this out by calibrating yourself, see below) In your head multiply the distance (1½ cm) by 60 to give 90 double paces. Now move forward 90 double paces.

6. Your calibration.

You only need one calibration to start with ie how many double paces to run (or to walk, if you normally walk) 100 metres, which is 1 cm on 1:10000 map. This is best done at first in a special training exercise with 100 meters marked out on a straight path. Make sure you calibrate yourself using the gait that you naturally fall into in an event. A 10minute run may be advisable before calibrating yourself to establish this. When your pace count over several tries has settled down to about the same on each 100m leg, make a note of this number. Now change it to the nearest 10 or 5, to make it a bit easier to do the mental arithmetic during an event.

For example, change a calibration of 67 to 70 or 54 to 55. If your calibration is now, say, 70, then write down:

1:10000 70 1:15000 100 (i.e. 70 + ½ of 70 = 105 & rounded down to 100 for ease of use)

The number of double paces to take is given by: Distance to go (cm on the map) X calibration factor (paces per cm for this map scale) Take this sheet with you to each event & memorise your calibration for the map scale of this event just before you go to the start.

7. Corrections.

Your pace counting will vary with terrain & with tiredness. As a rough guide try the following corrections. Experience will help you to refine them for yourself.

Walking: Increase the paces required by half (if you calibrated yourself running)

Uphill: Increase paces by half.

Downhill: Reduce paces by half

Across Country: Increase paces by half

When tired: Increase paces by half.

8. Summary.

Pace counting is a personal thing. It needs a lot of practice at first and even then you may decide to not use it. I get the impression that those who are instinctively good navigators use pace counting the least. So, as most of us are mediocre navigators, it should be useful for the majority.

9. Footnote.

Some thumb compasses have the main scale divided up at 2/3 of 1cm. This is fine. Do the calibration as above for the two map scales and then take 2/3 of them both and write them down. Now measure the distance to go in terms of the divisions on your compass and apply the calibration corresponding to the map scale.

There is a different approach to calibration, which some people prefer. They calibrate themselves over 100 metres as above. They then measure the distance to go on the map in meters. They do this either by using the metre scale shown on every map or by having a metre scale on their compass for both 1:10000 and 1:15000 maps. They now have to remember only one calibration number for all maps ie paces per 100 metres. Their double paces are given by:

Distance to go (as 100’s of metres on the ground) X calibration factor (in paces per 100 meters).

Bill Brown

I am a Grade 3 Controller. That means that I am “qualified” to control events staged by other clubs up to Colour Coded standard. For Badge Events a Grade 2 Controller is required and Grade 1’s can control National Events. It is not hard to become a Grade 3 controller. Indeed Richard Arman (the club’s only Grade 1 controller) has recently staged a one day course for potential controllers.

The role of the Controller is to ensure (as far as is possible) that the event will run smoothly and that the courses conform to the BOF guidelines in terms of technical and physical difficulty. This usually involves some dialogue with the organiser to ensure that items such as First Aid etc. are covered but the majority of the involvement will be with checking the courses.

Everybody will have their own idea of how courses should look but there are clearly laid down guidelines to ensure that courses follow a standard level of difficulty. Consequently the Controller has to put aside his (or her) own views of how they would have approached course setting for the area and concentrate on assessing the technical/physical aspects of the courses.

This will invariably involve some armchair checking but the most important part is visiting the forest to check the planner’s tags. Believe me it is a lot harder to find a length of tape than it is to find a control kite and stake. Occasionally there will be some discussion about the suitability or siting of a control and this may involve a joint visit with the planner. However these things are usually easily ironed out.

One of the great pleasures of being a Controller is the time spent in the forest on your own with only the wildlife for company.

If you fancy giving controlling a try please contact Richard and I am sure he will be happy to guide you through the necessary procedure. Believe me it definitely improves your orienteering.

Ian Sayer

In April Richard Arman wrote a very interesting piece about contouring round hillsides. He found a compass helpful and I am going to try his approach. The method I find works for me relies on judgement only.

Typically you have just found your control half way up a rather long steepish slope, well away from the top and bottom. The planner has now set you the problem of finding your next control, perhaps 200 meters away across the hillside at the same level at which you now are. The hillside can be heavily forested or a bare mountainside. What to do? What I do is to look as far ahead as I can see and I judge what is a level line along the hillside. Then I choose the base of a tree or a clump of grass which is on that line but only about 50 metres away, or less if I can’t see that far. I focus on that point and make my way exactly to it. Then I do it all over again and again. Its quick and certainly not exact but for me I find it surprisingly effective. But you must always remember that you are making small height errors all the time, so if there is a feature at your height on the way or nearby, be sure to lookout for it. It always worth changing height a little to gain this reassurance. Of course I pace count to help me look for these signposts but then I tend to pace-count instinctively all the time. I get really bored with myself sometimes!

Anyway, try it yourself and see if it works for you. I find it works particularly well on rocky hillsides where you have to go up and down round outcrops all the time just to make progress and it is very easy to lose large amounts of height without realising it.

That is not the end of the story however. The clever planner will, if he can, place your next control not at the same level as your present one but at 3-5 contours above or below it. This is enough to stop you seeing it if you contour to it on the level. What I do is very simple minded because I always get it badly wrong if I set out contouring but climbing or dropping ‘a bit’ as I go. Instead I now climb or drop the contour difference right at the start, which may be slow. Then I contour at the new level as fast as I can go.

How to climb or drop 3-5 contours? Again pretty crude. To climb, I look directly ahead at the hillside and up ‘a bit’. I identify a tree base or clump or grass directly in this line of sight and climb up to it. I stand exactly on that point and repeat the exercise. I have now climbed one contour (5m or 16ft). Dropping down is not so easy. I look down and guess where my height plus a ’a bit’ might be and make for that exact spot etc. etc. If you are young or vertically challenged, you can use ‘a bit less’ than your height as your yardstick but use 3 of these per control interval. Crude or not it works for me. Try it yourself. Has anyone else got a ‘secret’ method which they might like to share?

By the way, on a steep hillside, you are nearly always more likely to spot a control flag if you are above it than if you are below it. May the O-Force be with you!

Bill Brown

The number one problem about it is that, well, it’s dark, thus you cannot see things very easily. All the usual daytime hazards are there; bog, brashings, fight, climb and rain, but insect life is not very evident – perhaps they are all in bed.

So to combat the dark, we need light – lots of light and therefore we must be prepared to carry it; the brighter the bulb and the bigger the batteries, the better. Do not forget to carry some sort of back-up system, a small extra torch or at worst a spare bulb for your headlight. Try practicing changing the bulb in the dark. Not too difficult, eh? It will be much more difficult ‘out there’.

You don’t really need any different clothing except to remember that it is often colder at night and that you may be out longer than usual and you won’t want to catch cold. You will be out longer because you will be slower than usual.

Out There
Your light has to do a lot for you. You want to be able to see as far ahead as possible. You want to see everything to each side. You want to see where you are putting your feet and you want to be able to read the map. In previous years they used to stick reflective patches on the control flag or even have a little light inside it – not any more, you are stuck with the standard daytime control configuration.

Rain, especially for spectacle wearers, is much more of a problem at night. You get dazzle from raindrops on the spectacles and/or on your visor and remember it’s difficult to wear a peaked cap as the peak cuts the light out when you are reading the map. Life gets tedious, don’t it?

To me the worst problem is one’s breath. As soon as you pause to study the map your breath is condensing right in front of you are obscuring a great deal. It also does it when you are not going along too quickly. Breathing deliberately out of the very corner of your mouth can help, but I will not recommend this as a very practical answer to the problem.

You will need to be taking rather more care where you put your feet as you cannot so easily see the unevenness of the ground and the bits of detritus that are lying on it. Take care also that you are not running into unseen small tree branches that always aim for the eyes – at last, spectacle wearers have the advantage here!

Techniques
By day, keeping an eye on other runners can be especially beneficial, particularly in the vicinity of a control. At night, other people’s lights can be a real blessing. I say they ‘can’ be, especially if you are temporarily disoriented. But then again if the bearer of the other light is also disoriented you both have a problem.

The major difference in technique has to be that you will need to plan each leg so that you spend the absolute maximum distance glued to the line features, preferably tracks. You need to find a secure attack point as near to the control as you can possibly get. If this means you need to go further around or even come in from the back of the control, so be it. The absolute minimum time spent going cross country is advisable and when you do, be glued to the compass and, if possible, pace count as well.

Being able to recognise the existence of every path junction, however small, is essential if you are to correctly identify your attack point. At night some are difficult to see and some just disappear.

Conclusion
Above all, you need to take care. Rushing headlong just hoping to pick up some feature is out. But it just has to be the supreme orienteering challenge and it is always just possible that the tortoise can overcome the hare under these conditions. Why not venture forth when the opportunity arises?

Richard Arman

In former times, when the charcoal burners were working in forests on hillsides, they needed to build their clumps of logs near-by to save time and effort. So they dug circular areas out of the hillsides. There they slowly heated the wood over several days to drive off the smoke, gasses and vapour to leave behind charcoal. Charcoal, when you manage to light it, burns with no smoke at very high temperatures.

So what we see is an historical record of those days. (Actually the full story is much more exciting and I’ll write a longer article if the editor thinks you might be interested).

I love having platforms on my course but I’ve never seen a real, live charcoal clump – until this summer. We were walking near the German/French border when we came across a visitor’s footpath. Alongside this path were demonstrated the various stages of building a charcoal burning clump with full sized models. A clump can be up to three meters high and 3 meters wide in a conical shape.

To my delight, at the end of this path was a real, live clump, fully alight and giving out huge billows of smoke. It was the highlight of my holiday.

Bill Brown