Welcome to the following new members:

• Diana Smith (W21)
• Phil Moore (M40)
• Alleyn's School c/o Richard Alldrick
• Fiona Greenwood (W35) (actually a temporarily lapsed member)

SOUTH EAST RELAYS: TROSLEY COUNTRY PARK, JUNE 24TH

A good diverse turn out from SLOW included a family team, a junior team, and three mixed lots. First leg runners on the orange course suffered by not finding Control Two as it was still in the boot of the planner's car! Oops. It was disappointing for the likes of Charlotte Turner who had set off leading the field, and also quite daunting for some inexperienced Juniors. In the end, the organisers let the results stand in keeping with the low key friendly feel to the event. My team of Peter Huzan and Timo Teinila managed to come second behind Mole Valley B, with Mole Valley A (handicapped by lack of control) third. All in all, good fun and great to get the dust off my compass.

Sarah Brown

TRAINING DIARY Heather Walton

A big thank you to those who've organised Tuesday evening events to allow us to make the most of the light summer evenings - Andy Robinson/Gavin Andrews (Wimbledon); Frank Lyness/Ginny Catmur (Bushy Park) and Alan and Di Leakey (Oxshott). See the exciting results elsewhere in this issue.

There is still time to fit in a few more. Andy Morrison has invited us to a tour of bits of common land around Claygate on 17 July (either street event type format (set length of time to get lots of clues) or a pleasant country run) with shower/social at his house afterwards. On 24 July there will be Sarah's Summer Sprint around Sheen.

Other dates we will be meeting at the Thames Hare & Hounds clubhouse, Richardson Evans Memorial Playing Fields, Kingston Vale (map on website) at 7.15 for 7.30 as usual. Food and drink afterwards (about 9pm onwards) at the Robin Hood pub on Kingston Hill.

Here is the detailed calendar:

I hope you are all managing to keep some training going despite the lack of incentive of any major events. You'll be glad you did when major events do start again…

JUNIOR JOTTINGS

Junior training - see Captain's report. We will be arranging some training in September before the Peter Palmer relays including some night orienteering training. We will select the date to suit those running in the relays but other juniors will be welcome too. Watch your e-mails/telephones or ring me on 020 8891 0453 to get the latest.

Heather

SLOW JUNIORS - YOUR CLUB NEEDS YOU

Hi SLOW juniors, There are a couple of junior TEAM EVENTS coming up in September where it would be great to get out SLOW junior teams.

First up is the YVETTE BAKER TROPHY, named after Britain's most famous orienteer; she is a current world champion. This is a team competition where anybody can run. You run either Yellow, Orange, Light Green or Green depending on your age and whether you have got a Gold standard. There need to be at least 8 people up to age M/W20 (with at least 3 M/W14 or younger). Since everyone runs their own course separately, all of you can come along whatever your standard.

The second event is the PETER PALMER TROPHY. This is the main relay event for juniors - and it is just for juniors! Overnight accommodation (on the Saturday) & breakfast are provided since the event starts at 4.30am! We would travel up together to get there on Saturday at 5pm where we can meet the other teams and take part in a friendly 5-a-side football competition, followed by going out for an evening meal.

To make up a complete relay team, we need 8 people up to M/W18, with at least two boys & two girls. If we cannot make up that number then we can still put in a non-competitive team of 5 people. The courses are Yellow, Orange, Red, Light Green, and Green.

The club will be keen to put on TRAINING in south-west London for all of you. We will concentrate on improving your skills needed to get round whatever colour course you need to run. This can include some night orienteering pratice for the ONE OR TWO people who would need to run the Red course at night for the Peter Palmer Trophy. The location (Sutton Park) is of the right standard to put on good junior courses, even at night.

For both competitions, it can be a great way of meeting other SLOW juniors, being part of the team, improving your skills, and having some fun experiences. Please reply to Pete Huzan if you would like to have a go at either of these events, or if you have any questions. And your parents will be pleased to hear that these events will be free for you. Remember that this year, the main aims are just to HAVE FUN and get some experience. In future years we can always try to do better. Here are the dates:

Best wishes

Pete

TIME FOR A FIX Andy Robinson

What's happening on the fixtures front? The surprising answer is quite a lot. Despite the general 'doom and gloom' feeling that FMD has caused, the last couple of months have seen (in the South-East at any rate) pretty much the level of orienteering that one would expect at this time of year.

Of course things are still bad in other parts of the country and some of the biggies lined up for the late summer/autumn have fallen by the wayside - White Rose, Caddihoe and the AIRE National have all been cancelled. It's now not just a problem of whether FMD is still about but whether mappers and planners have enough time to access an area beforehand. So here's hoping Newborough on 21^st October holds and we can have a British Champs this year.

Anyway in this part of the world most O areas are open and SLOW has been very active in putting on little fixtures. Wimbledon Common has seen:-

These last two are just the sort of thing we should be doing at a local level to let the great unwashed out there see what orienteering is all about. OK, we're not expecting any great surge in membership but hopefully we've planted a few seeds for later.

In the mainstream O line we put on a small colour-coded on The Nower, where we added to our overall knowledge of how to run events with SportIdent - you can learn a lot from your mistakes!!

Arising from that I intend for future events to appoint 4 officials. Besides the usual two of organiser and planner, there would also be an SI organiser and an SI planner. The idea is to follow the principal that the more you split jobs up, the smaller each one is, the easier it is to do and the easier it is to find someone to do it. Actually the SI planner's job is so small (programming boxes) that it would normally be done by the planner or the SI organiser. I did it for The Nower and it looks like I'm also doing it for Reigate on 15 July. I found it good fun chucking SI boxes about and making lots of beeping noises. Little things…

But it's the SI organiser's job where we really have scope to make progress. It really does take away a sizeable chunk from the main organiser, cutting that job by anything up to a half. Don and I found it a doddle at The Nower where Gordon was doing the SI bit, and Teresa should likewise find things pretty easy for Reigate.

But every silver lining has a cloud and here it's the level of expertise needed in the SI organiser role. Our star in this area was Andrew Leaney, but he's just moved to Lancashire and that leaves just Gordon Parker and Gavin Andrews who currently have the expertise to fill that role. I'm learning as much as I can and so (I hope) are Andrew Trimble and Philip Robinson, the other attendees at the training day back in April.

So the urgent job is to increase the club's pool of expertise. I'll be prodding a few people in the SI direction, and aim to fix up another training session later in the year. ARM-TWISTING TIME! No fixtures report would be complete without a list of fixtures to come highlighting the vacancies that need filling. So then you've got the chance to contact me and say "I could do that job" or (more realistically) you've got some advance warning of what I'm after when you see me heading in your direction.

We also have the beginnings of the programme for 2002:

Andy Robinson

BUSHY PARK SCORE EVENT: 12 June 2001; report from Frank Lyness

Bushy Park is one of my occasional running areas; although it is very flat and wide tracts can become incredibly boggy after prolonged rain, as we have had this recent Spring. However, it has some lovely woodland gardens, and it was whilst running through these in late April and noticing the azaleas beginning to bud, that it occurred to me that it would make a good venue for a summer evening score event.

I thought at first that I would have to put out artificial controls but was pleasantly surprised to find that there were just about sufficient suitable man-made features to get away without having to do this. In this regard the large numbers of benches with plaques/dedications on them scattered around the prettier areas was crucial. These gave me 11 of the 32 controls that I finished up with. Bus stops visible above the peripheral wall, notices on fences, and the odd buildings within the park yielded further clue possibilities.

I was not aware of any previous orienteering map until Mike Elliot turned up on the day with a 1:15000 map drawn professionally in 1974 (before my time). So I used the Ordnance Survey 1:25000 London South map as the base and simply doubled the scale. This produced a 1:12500 map which fitted neatly onto a page of A4. To make it more challenging I omitted all paths, roads, and vegetation. Contour lines could also be safely ignored. The only features remaining were boundaries (fences, walls, lake edges) and the numerous streams/ditches, the principal one of which conveys the Longford River through the park via the Diana Fountain lake to the Long Water in Hampton Court Park and the Thames.

Much of the fun in planning a score event is in placing the controls so as to give competitors the most awkward route choices and to lure them into doing too much. I judged that 32 controls using the whole area of the park was appropriate for one hour, with a one point deduction per two minutes late. This was after I had run round them all in about 90 minutes on what I thought was the optimal route. I, of course, had the considerable advantage of having drawn the map and knowing beforehand exactly where I would be going (but I did abide by my instruction not to climb fences!).

The evening of 12 June turned out to be fine and conditions were perfect for orienteering. There were eleven 'competitors' if one includes Kay (just having a walk without a watch), and David (plus small boy in pushchair and arriving too late to be out for an hour). Results were as follows:

I was pleased that Ed got them all, and that he didn't do it in the hour. (I wonder what his final score would have been if he had aimed to be under the hour.) His route, for those of you with the map, was:

27,28,30,32,31,29,24,21,19,13,4,12,7,6,5,3,1,2,9,8,10,11,14,15,oops,18,20,17,16,22,26,25,23

Afterwards we went to the Catmurs' home where Ginny provided an excellent supper.

Frank Lyness

'DEVELOPMENT' ORIENTEERING Ginny Catmur

This year, as in previous years, the girls of Years 5 and 6 (aged 9-11) of The Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, enjoyed a morning out as a post-exam 'treat' and, as in previous years, this took the form of a competitive orienteering event.

The format was a 60-minute score event, with the controls of white and yellow standards. Andy Robinson planned the course, with the Start and Finish at the Windmill on Wimbledon Common (easy access for the school coaches); Sarah Brown put out the controls, Ed Catmur checked them, and he and I supervised the event and collected in the controls at the end. The girls had spent some time that morning in school with their teacher, coping the controls on to blank maps; then on the Common they were in groups of four, each group with an adult (about 25 groups in total).

Only one group managed to get all 15 controls (optimum distance 3.6 km) in the hour, so the planning was dead right. All the girls, as well as their accompanying adults and teachers, enjoyed themselves (thanks in great part to the glorious weather) …

so much so that I got a call, a couple of days later, from one of the parents who'd accompanied the girls to ask me if we (i.e. SLOW) could organise something similar for her husband's 40th birthday party (an afternoon of various sports activities). After consulting with various committee members I agreed to organise a score event on the Common, with Ed as planner.

The Start and Finish were at the Oberon Playing Fields, Lindisfarne Road, off Copse Hill, Wimbledon, where the birthday party was taking place. We planned a 60-minute, 15-control score, optimum distance 7 km, with controls at Light Green standard, as the lady who briefed me said that the 24 competitors would be 'very sporty and competitive'.

Unfortunately, Ed and I did not allow for the fact that the men had been playing football and softball (and drinking beer!) all afternoon and were rather weary by the time they got round to the orienteering. The average score was zero (because of time penalties). Nevertheless, many of the men really got into it and enjoyed themselves enormously, and I spent quite a while after they'd got back talking to them about various aspects of the sport.

I feel both these events were worthwhile. Although the schoolchildren are unlikely to attend oreinteering events in the near future, as their control over their own sport and leisure activities is limited (if not non-existent!), they will have had a positive experience of orienteering that might encourage them to try it again later.

In the case of the birthday party, I thought that we would be foolish to turn down the chance to show off the sport to a group of (allegedly) sporty and athletic men, who would certainly try it again if they enjoyed it sufficiently, and that this was a far easier way of reaching the public than a whole series of 'Come And Try It' events.

Oh - and the club will have benefited financially in a modest way, as we charged both the school and the birthday party £80, and the only expenses were the maps.

Ginny Catmur

SOUTH LONDON ORIENTEERS & WAYFARERS
Individual Performance Analysis - S.E. League 2000/2001

Competitors on colour coded and string courses are not itemised; their score was added to the Club's total at each event, but is not included in the Club's average score per run.

H indicates points given to non-competing helpers; these points are included in the competitors' total points and number of events attended columns, but not in their, or the Club's, average score per run.

LV = Long Valley HOU = Houghton & Bignor Hill RAN = Ranmore ASHR = Ashridge BAG = Bagshot Heath

RESULTS FROM THE TRAINING EVENT AT OXSHOTT: Thanks Alan and Di

You are strongly urged to confirm these events using the following answerphone services. The SEOA website has links to SE clubs and other regions.

Upcoming events:

South-East Night League (SENiLe)

Keith Tonkin, the Co-ordinator of SENiLe, has now up an Internet site for SENiLe