Orienteering in Bracknell Forest
So what is orienteering, and why bother trying it? Something I asked myself before heading to Bracknell Forest at the weekend to see what it was all about.
I was with an organised group. We were split into 8 teams and given a map with 25 markers to find, spread around the forest. We were given 2.5 hours to find as many as possible (with penalties for being late back) — and we were given a compass and shown how to use it. Easy, I thought. 2.5 hours is loads of time! Not so. There’s a lot more to orienteering than meets the eye. Strategy is everything. Finding the most efficient way to navigate the course to take in as many markers as possible was something we kind of discussed as an afterthought. We should have taken this more seriously!
2.5 hours later and we’d managed 19 markers, got very muddy, had alot of laughs, came third (hmmm!)and felt as though we could have done better! Orienteering is a great thing to do with a group of friends — even if you’ve not part of a larger group, you can set your own goals and targets. and Bracknell Forest is a good place to start. It is (almost) impossible to get totally lost — but you can really test yourself too. I still don’t know how to use a compass, though. This responsibility was given to another member of the team!
An orienteering map cost just £1 from the Look Out main desk. See http://www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/lookout for more information and directions.
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