White Rose Orienteering 2006

26th - 28th August 2006.

After the wedding of Oliver Johnson and Jenny Whitehead, most of yorkshire's orienteers made their way to a place between Pickering and Scarborough...awesome honeymoon territory!

Orienteering.

Well its not the best terrain in the world but it sure does beat the streets of Sheffield (without one of Neil's maps - so he doesn't get in a boo). The map resembled a piece of green paper and the ground resembled a classic yorkshire forest.
The running was fast in some places and the undergrowth was not that bad at this time of year - I was expecting not to come back with any legs which would have been a shame as I had to walk to work on the following tuesday! I finished in 7th place on the Sunday after missing the Saturday and ended up mugless (you win a mug for getting on the podium!). I also got a fastest split at the 16th control, 5 seconds clear of ANYONE else... amazing, even the newly married Oliver Johnson couldn't stop me on my way to partial glory!!

Scarborough - the town of gambling.

Amazing trip to Scarborough with 'the Johnsons' after the event to swim in the sea, play on the 2p slot machines and eat pizza on the beach! Made especially special by playing the 'guess the music' game with the NOW 10 cassette tape on the way (I was 2 when it came out so I was rubbish) but Middleditch showed that you need a PhD to be really good at it - he shone by beating my 6-2 - but he is coming up to his 40th birthday this year! - or maybe he just has been in ShUOC for a million years?! Still, I got T'Pau - 'China in your hand'... Awesome.
Then we sat in the rain surrounding a bonfire sipping beers until we got washed out and tired...ahh orienteering!

The score Relay

The day was filled with ambition with 3 superstar teams being created in the form of...

Team 1: Oliver Johnson, Neil Northrop and Matthew Dickinson.
Team 2: Matthew Crane, Robert Baker and Nick Barrable.
Team 3: Jennifer Johnson, Claire Leventon and Hazel Tant.

The race went like this...

We set off with Team 3 being non competitive, and with Craney in one team (major boo and hangover disadvantages) and Neil in the other (major boo disadvantage)...so it was a good start.
Neil ran off after talking about our plan for about 3 seconds, so me and Oli had to guess what he was doing and so we all ran off and collected some controls in a random order. Meanwhile, Craneys team managed to get back quite quickly and beat us by 2and a half minutes. Dammit! But hey we got on the podium and were a clear 4 minutes ahead of 'the Bandits' made of Rhys, Franklin and Little snr.

The champange flowed on the podium and the mugs were flying...another great weekend in Yorkshire!!