Wrekin Orienteers Enjoy Postbox Orienteering

Report by Richard Rodgers member of Wrekin Orienteers

Like clubs all over the country, Wrekin Orienteers’ usual summer series of sociable mid-week evening events had to be abandoned when coronavirus forced a national lockdown. However as restrictions started to ease they found another way to get their “fix”.

Club member Richard Rogers takes up the story:

“When lockdown was announced, a couple of us started to look more actively at MapRun as a way to provide some informal courses through the summer. The British Orienteering webinars on MapRun and OpenOrienteeringMap really helped us in learning how to set courses up quickly, and my club mate Lawrie Jones took up the idea of using the online postbox database to give us a ready made selection of distinctive controls - a nice change from street lamps and telegraph poles! Our chairman Adrian Pickles called a video meeting, and between the three of us we quickly sketched out a short series of urban score courses. Then we had another couple pitch in with two more, which was brilliant - now we had enough for two months’ worth with a new course published every week!

“Although the postbox database gave us a head start in producing courses quickly, it’s not perfect - some postboxes have disappeared completely, or been re-sited by a short distance, and in a few cases the locations are plain wrong - by quite a bit! Often the location needs a little tweak. But a lot of checking and correction can be done using Google Street View and Google Earth Pro, so that often only a single visit is needed to check control sites.

“Using OpenOrienteeringMap has been helpful too, as any map changes done via OpenStreetMap are included within 24 hours, again speeding up production."

The courses have been a hit with members, visitors and newcomers.

Peter Martin from Mole Valley Orienteering Club was planning to attend Croeso - although that was of course cancelled, he used his trip to run six of Wrekin’s MapRun courses over two days!  He recalls: “I ran Newport on Wednesday morning; it was early morning and nice running along the canal. I could have done better but I'm a bit slow and out of practice at the moment. But I carried on to Wellington where I needed a bit of shopping and did the run there as well. I then had lunch in Church Stretton and time to think about tackling those hills - the last one I found very strenuous, but all good fun!”

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Celebrating the re-start of orienteering.  
What activities or events has your club organised? 
Have you recently enjoyed taking part in a local MapRun course?  Or have you attended a recent club event?  How was it?

Send in your news stories, snippets and photos to Jennie Taylor Communications Officer.  Email:  jtaylor@britishorienteering.org.uk 

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To view the current guidance visit:  
https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/COVID19_Safe_Orienteering