Welcome to the 10th Edition of NNews – a (roughly!) quarterly newsletter from Northern Navigators.
The newsletter contains details of upcoming events and contributions from our members. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this edition.
This newsletter was put together by Thomas Puschmann and Matthew Foskett.
Please let us know ([email protected]) if you have any comments or wish to contribute to any future editions.
(Picture of NN team at CompassSport Final – thanks to everyone who came, it was a real team effort)
Upcoming Events
^^^ Entry for score courses closes tonight! ^^^
Note: Some details are provisional, always look at the website of the organising club for final details.
Sat 18th Oct 2025–October Odyssey Day 1; Cramlington, Cramlington (NATO, National)
Sun 19th Oct 2025–October Odyssey Day 2; Beanley, Alnwick (NATO, National)
Sat 25th Oct 2025–Short/Sprint; Stokesley School and 6th Form College, Stokesley (CLOK, Local)
Sun 26th Oct 2025–NE Score Champs; Congburn, Chester-le-Street (NN, Local)
Thu 30th Oct 2025–Kiplin Hall Dusk/Night; Kiplin Hall, Northallerton (CLOK, Local)
Sat 1st Nov 2025–Autumn/Winter Local series No 1 – Weetslade; Weetslade Colliery Country Park, Killingworth (NATO, Local)
Sat 8th Nov 2025–Autumn/Winter Local Series No 2 – Silverlink; Silverlink Country Park, Shiremoor (NATO, Local)
Sat 8th Nov 2025–Autumn Series Short Race; Robin Hood’s Bay (CLOK, Local)
Sat 8th Nov 2025–BL Talkin Tarn Introductory Event; Talkin Tarn Country Park, Brampton (BL Local)
Sat 8th Nov 2025–BL Talkin Tarn Night Event (NWNL); Talkin Tarn Country Park, Brampton (BL, Local)
Sat 22nd Nov 2025–Autumn Series Short Race; Saltburn Valley Gardens (CLOK, Local)
Sun 23rd Nov 2025–Prudhoe Riverside Local; Prudhoe riverside, Prudhoe (NATO, Local)
Sun 23rd Nov 2025–Tim Watkins Trophy Long-O; Blawith and Subberthwaite, Lake District (SROC, Local)
Sat 6th Dec 2025–Autumn Series Short Race; Albert Park, Middlesbrough (CLOK, Local)
Sun 7th Dec 2025–BL Penrith Urban (NWUL); Penrith, Penrith (BL, Local)
Sat 13th Dec 2025–Autumn/Winter Local Series No 3 – Ashington Forest; Ashington Community Forest, Ashington (NATO, Local)
Sat 13th & Sun 14th Dec 2025-Steel City Weekend; Sheffield (SHUOC / SYO, Regional)
Sun 14th Dec 2025–Long Distance Regional Event; Silton Forest, Northallerton (CLOK, Regional)
Sat 20th Dec 2025–Autumn Series Short Race; Summerhill Country Park, Hartlepool (CLOK, Local)
Sun 21st Dec 2025–Plessey Christmas special; Plessey Woods Country Park, Bedlington (NATO, Local)
Fri 26th Dec 2025–Boxing Day Score; Houghall Woods, Durham (NN, Local)
Sun 4th Jan 2026–New Year’s Relays; Flatts Lane Country Park, Eston (CLOK, Local)
Sun 11th Jan 2026–Bolam Local; Bolam Lake, Newcastle upon Tyne (NATO, Local)
Edinburgh Big Weekend
Fri 23rd Jan 2026–Edinburgh Big Weekend – Fight with the Night; Edinburgh (EUOC, Regional)
Sat 24th Jan 2026–Edinburgh Big Weekend – City Race (SOUL 1); Edinburgh (EUOC, Regional)
Sun 25th Jan 2026–Edinburgh Big Weekend – Classic; Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh (EUOC, Regional)
Sun 25th Jan 2026–Long Distance Regional Event; Wilton Woods, Eston (CLOK Regional)
Sun 22nd Feb 2026–CompassSport Cup Heat; Beacon Hill, Penrith (BL, National)
We also have a weekly club night on Wednesdays at 6.30pm in the vicinity of Durham City. Contact [email protected] for further details.
Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2025
This year’s AGM will be held on Sunday 26th October 2025. The meeting will take place at the Scout Hut following the North East Score Championships which is hosted by the Club at Cong Burn. The Scout Hut will be used as the Registration and Download for the event, its location is; What3Words ///icons.shovels.soccer
starting around 1400 hours, following the Event.
Nominations are invited for positions on the committee, which currently comprises:-
Officers:
Chairperson: Boris Spence
Secretary: Debby Warren
Treasurer: Kath Marshall-Ivens
Fixtures: Debby Warren
Membership: Allen Banister
Other Committee members:
Mapping officer – Julian Warren
Junior Rep. – Thomas Puschmann
Welfare Officer – Tom Dutton
Results Secretary, Allen Banister
Activities Fixtures Secretary: Julian Warren
Website: Allen Banister
Publicity and Social Media Members: Matthew Foskett and Dave
Peel
Other members: Katherine Hampshire
Names of nominees, together with a proposer and seconder should reach the secretary 7 days before the meeting.
Wednesday Clubnights
Our weekly club training continues to be well-attended and a popular way to concentrate on technique or fitness. The venue changes each week but usually within a 5 mile radius of Durham and is operated via a WhatsApp group. If you would like to join, get in touch with Debby and you can be added to the group. Alternatively, the details are put on the website each week (usually by Monday).
Summer Street-O Series
Matthew Foskett
Thanks to everyone who’s joined us for our 2025 Summer Street-O series – hope that you’ve all enjoyed it!
A special thanks to our planners: Dave, Thomas, Andrew, Tom, Meg, Oliver and Horst. Also to Julian and Allen for their help behind the scenes with maps and timing.
Congratulations to Thomas on winning the series! It’s the 2nd year running of Thomas in first/Dave in second…maybe someone else next year? Oliver, Iain and Julian rounded out the top 5. For full series results take a look here.
Please do drop me a line with any suggestions/volunteers for next year – plan is for ~5no. events from late April or May to early September.
Scottish 65 Days – my favourite controls
Elizabeth Bedwell
Inspired by a conversation with Evs Baker after Day 3 about which was my favourite control that prompted me to think about my orienteering in a new way, here is my rundown of the Scottish 65 Days 2025 based on my favourite control each day.
Day 1 – Glen Feardar East
02E: 8.0 km, 104:19
Day 1 was technically challenging and physically demanding, reminding us all what Scottish orienteering can be like. Sometimes a bearing like this can go terribly, terribly wrong. But when it goes right, it is so satisfying. Having the boulders, the ruin, and the changes in vegetation definitely helped me to keep my line. I also much prefer approaching controls like this from above. As one of the few controls that went right today, control 11 had to be my favourite.
Day 2 – Glen Feardar West
02E: 7.4 km, 116:34
The area for Day 2 overlapped with the area for Day 1, much to our dismay. This meant more technical navigation through physical terrain designed to break an ankle! But the weather was nice and I was beginning to remember how to navigate in this kind of terrain making the whole day more enjoyable. Leg 7 to 8 was my favourite on Day 2, because someone who had run earlier had done all the hard work! Heading out of control 7, I followed the stream towards head-high bracken, not sure how I was going to find my way through. Thankfully there was an elephant track, which I followed hoping it would be obvious on the otherside… The elephant track led straight to where the linear marsh crossed the wall, making what would have been a very tricky leg much simpler. I often feel guilty following other runners into controls, but following the tracks they left behind? No shame in that!
Day 3 – Creag Choinnich – Middle Distance
02E: 3.8 km, 47:35
After a couple of days of orienteering in Scotland I was beginning to get into the trickier navigation. This was definitely my favourite day of the week, so it was harder to pick one favourite control. I chose control 8 because it was such a surprising control. Climbing up the re-entrant I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect at the top and couldn’t picture what the feature would look like on the ground. I was thrown off by the depressions being marked by the bold contour line which made them look more significant and by the unusual colouring in the lines. Yet when I got there it made perfect sense – the depressions filled with long grass stood out dramatically from the white forest all around and in the second one sat my control.
Day 4 – Balfour – WRE Middle Distance
02E: 4.6 km, 75:55
Day 4 started well, picking up a free cucumber on the way to the arena! And after a rest day I felt refreshed and ready for another run. Today the elite runners had a second middle distance course, while everyone else was back to classic/long distance. After being sloppy looking for control 11 in the wrong gully, control 12 was an opportunity to make up lost time by running hard through some nice white forest (hard to come by in these 6 Days!). I picked off the path junction, checked my compass, looked up and saw the fallen trees, which led me straight to the boulder with the control on it. Lovely! (Until I got carried away and headed off in completely the wrong direction to control 13…)
Day 5 – Glen Dye – WRE Long Distance
02E: 10.3 km, 168:30
This was a day of highs and lows with some fun, interesting navigational challenges, a long leg that took ~50 minutes, and me racing to finish before the courses-close time so as not to be disqualified! Control 15 was my favourite because despite looking technical I was happy with my route choice and felt like I executed it well. I followed the line of knolls out of control 14. Then having the corner of the green to aim for helped me cross the marsh without losing my line. Once in the circle, I climbed onto the first boulder to get a better vantage point and managed to spot the control behind another boulder a few meters away so I could go straight to it.
Overall, the Scottish 65 Days were a fun week of orienteering on an interesting mix of areas. It was both physically and navigationally challenging but this article hopefully highlights that even the toughest runs have some enjoyable controls.
Lagganlia
Thomas Puschmann
Towards the end of July, I travelled up to Aviemore alongside 23 upper year M/W14s that had also been selected to take part in this training camp based in the East Highlands. Lagganlia is a yearly event, each year taking up to 24 new juniors. We arrived on Saturday evening and were soon getting to know other people through icebreaker activities.
Day 1
After an 8 o’clock breakfast, we headed out to Heathfield for a day of map practice, boulders and wasp nests. In the afternoon, we headed a little way down the track for a star relay. One person would take a tag out to control 1, then come back. Person 2 takes it from 1-2, person 3 takes it from 2-3, person 1 takes it from 4-5 and so on until we had completed all controls. Some people were keen to head home after a large Scottish wood wasp invaded our camp. Luckily, they don’t sting.
Day 2
We took the minibus to North Granish for the second day. The trip was filled with songs such as Combine Harvester, which became a daily tradition, though some coaches weren’t so happy about our loud singing. North Granish was an excellent area with loads of small rolling hills and birch trees, which made for some really fun orienteering. We had a variety of exercises, including long and short legs, corridor, handrails, line, hills, and depressions. The most interesting, though, was the sketch course. That morning, we were given a course and a set amount of time to draw our own sketch maps, which we had to use for the exercise. For most of us, we were able to complete the course using our maps, and I think most people learned a lot about simplifying through this challenge. We finished off the day with an odd-even relay where two people ran at once, and we had two maps: one with even-numbered controls and the other with odd-numbered controls. You could get one control at a time, and the first team back with all controls wins.
Day 3
For day 3, we changed it up a bit and travelled for 1 and a bit hours to pine forested sand dunes at Roseisle. A really unique type of terrain that I hadn’t run on before. We got a large selection of courses, which included some in a technical green area. The maps had most of the paths removed and some people decided to try navigating without a compass.
After lunch, we took the long route around to the relay start. After a morning of the forest pretty much to ourselves, this relay was full of people. It was a distraction relay and we were set off as if we were the second or third leg in a relay. The race was filled with gaffles and coaches running around trying to distract us. They would shout things like “do you know what control you’re going to?”, “I’m lost, can you help me” or “It’s that way”. Sometimes what the coaches were saying was correct, but you never knew. One of the controls wasn’t turned on, so we had to use the pin punch.
Overall, I think I improved a lot from that day because you really had to pay attention to detail and concentrate at all times. Then, back to Lagganlia it was for cake, warm food, lots of games of hide-and-seek, a presentation by the coaches, and our beds.
Day 4
Wednesday was the day of the sprint orienteering. Firstly, a short drive brought us to Aviemore. This was the qualifier for the sprint championships. It was a gaffled, timed start, urban event with a little bit of forest. The course was made challenging through the use of artificial barriers. Lots of people got caught out by these and it cost them time and their place in the results. Near the end, there was a complex butterfly section near the golf course.
After the morning qualifiers, we headed to another outdoor centre called Glenmore Lodge. Everyone participated in the knockouts ,where we started off with 2 gaffled butterfly loops and then explored the rest of the site. Our course was only 1.4km long for this, but it still had some fairly steep hills, especially the road alongside the ski slope. After this, the top 3 boys and the top two girls from the two heats moved into quarantine for the final. There were slightly more boys than girls, so that’s why there were different numbers. Quarantine is an area where competitors wait; they can’t see the start, you are forbidden to leave, and strictly no electronics. We were told that in some events, people have had to wait up to 8 hours in quarantine, so people often sleep. Luckily, we only had to wait for about 15 minutes.
This was going to be a very interesting race. For the final, we had only 800m, 11 controls on a 1:1500 map! It was a very fast-paced race. Out of the 6 people in the final, I came second, but only because the first two finishers mispunched on the last control. To finish the morning, we had a game of volleyball. Then we headed back to Lagganlia to rest before the night.
At around 21:00, we headed to Spey Valley golf course for a selection of night courses, 2 light greens and an orange. Most people took this fairly easy. It was a good idea to include this event because it gave a range of different types of events. The golf course had fairly distinct features, so it was very safe. Because of this, we did have quite a late bedtime, but everyone enjoyed it, and it was a good chance to practice night-o.
Day 5
For day 5, we went to Loch Vaa. Here we had lots of smaller exercises, so back to normal again. Unfortunately, the map was a bit out of date and the whole place was covered in uneven heather. We had a few simplification exercises which were good as there were lots of controls. There were also many unique forest, marsh, and contour features, and the group learnt a lot about planning and execution here. In the afternoon was a peg race. Eight main controls, each with an unknown number of pegs attached. There was a mass start, and if you go to a control with a peg, you must take it and then complete the extra control. So you do 1 to 1a to 2 rather than 1 to 2. The finish also had pegs on it. The person with the most pegs wins. If 2 people both have the same number of pegs, it’s based on time. No control has enough pegs for everyone. This type of race is designed to make the better people get the pegs at the first control so the not so good people can get ahead. With no pegs it was 2.9km, compared to the 3.7km you did if you went to all the controls.
Day 6
By now, we were all shattered, but this day was the most important of all. It was the tour championships. Located in Culbin Forest, a much harder version of Roseisle, it was 5.5km with 20 controls. We used the skills we developed over the past week to successfully find most controls. The girls had 4.5km with a few fewer hills to climb, with the same technical level. We also had a quarantine about 600m from the start, which made it feel like a real event. After, we took the minibus back. That afternoon, we did our final bit of orienteering. A relay on site. Two out of 3 runners per team were out at once; there were 18 controls. You could get one each time. Some of the controls had a bag with an acrylic puzzle piece. They were coloured corresponding to our teams and the first team to complete the puzzle was the winner. Not everyone competed due to minor injuries that the coaches didn’t want to get worse right before the Scottish 6 days. To finish, we had a big party meal, 3 excellent courses by the cooks. This was followed by a ceilidh. It was a lot of fun and a great way to spend the last evening.
But wait… it wasn’t over yet because at 22:30 we all had to sneak out and hide without the coaches finding us. Maybe it was our practice of playing lots of games of hide-and-seek throughout the week, but the coaches couldn’t find us. However, one person handed themselves in because of the cold, and another thought they had been found when they misheard the coach, so they got up and were spotted. Everyone else was out there until exactly 23:50, when we headed straight to the coaches’ cabin. What a great way to finish!
I had a fantastic week and very much thank the coaching team, organisers, selectors, cooks, and other helpers for making this possible. I massively improved my orienteering skills and made new friends, and I am looking forward to my next year of orienteering.
Organising the start at a large orienteering event
Elizabeth Bedwell
After attending several different large orienteering events over the summer (JK, BOC, S6D) and discussing the pros and cons of different start set-ups with other NNers, I thought this might be useful to share with the club as a basis for running our own events and as information for those newer to orienteering. These are the basic ideas for running a successful start, but exact details will depend on specific event and terrain requirements.
Setting up the start:
Start boxes are usually marked out with red & white tape.
Tip: It is always a good idea to have a complete walk-through of the Start before the first competitors arrive. For example, at BOC 2024, during the walk-through we realised that we had ended up with 6 boxes instead of 5, so all competitors would have been late for their starts!
The event Controller will usually be checking all controls on the morning of the event. They should tell Start Officials when all controls are confirmed in the correct place and competitors should not start until this time.
Location of the start:
The Start Kite is marked by the purple triangle on all course maps and this should be placed accurately.
The Start Area itself does not need to be immediately adjacent to the Start Kite or even on the map. It should be close enough that no navigation is required to get to the Start Kite – the route may be taped but does not have to be.
Competitors will likely go to the Start Kite before navigating to their first control, but they do not have to and sometimes the best route may not be via the Start Kite.
Tip: The Start Area should be located such that it does not block a route that any competitors would want to take, either out of the Start or later in the courses. Ideally this will be considered when the courses are planned and there will be an obvious flow out of the Start with all courses going in a similar direction.
Start layout:
-Warm-up Area
Most events do not require a dedicated warm-up area, but it is useful to consider when setting up the Start because competitors will want to warm-up/mill about nearby anyway. Having a designated area for this will keep the main Start Area clearer.
-Start boxes
In Figure 1 I have drawn 5 boxes before the Start Line. BOF rules say only a minimum of 4 is required. A 5-minute call-up used to be the standard, but 4-minutes is seeming increasingly popular.
Loose control descriptions should be made available in the -3 minute box.
Blank maps (one of each scale used by competitors) should be available in the -2 minute box. Also note that Elite Starts at world ranking events do not have blank maps available.
Tip: Tent pegs can be useful to keep maps in place and visible for windy starts.
-Start lanes
Depending on the number of courses and the expected number of competitors, a varying number of start lanes could be useful. Dividing the Start into separate lanes can help spread people out and ensure two people don’t go off on the same course in the same minute. At some big events each course will have a separate lane.
It is common to have a specific lane for late-starters or competitors on the white/yellow courses as these competitors require more attention from Start Officials.
-Map boxes
Usually laid out with longest courses furthest away so faster runners clear the area more quickly. Often one Start Official’s role is to place one map beneath each box every minute to make it more accessible for competitors.
-Call-up
The Call-up Clock tells the “call-up time” which for the start shown in Figure 1 is 5 minutes fast compared to “race time” (neither of these have to be the real time). For events with pre-allocated start times, competitors are called-up when this Call-up Clock shows their start times.
The clock should be mounted high and as visible as possible.
Depending on the event and the number of competitors, the start official here could be shouting out the list of competitors names or just shouting the “call-up time”.
-Start line
The Start Clock telling “race time” should be clearly visible to competitors on the Start Line. The clock will beep at 10 seconds to go and then beep for the final 4 seconds with a longer beep as the minute changes.
The Start Official here should check competitors remember to punch the start box (if required) and at 10 seconds to go say my favourite phrase ‘you may step over the line, then go on the long beep’.
Tip: Last minute notices should be kept to a minimum as saying anything to competitors at this point will likely be a distraction and quickly forgotten.
SI boxes:
-Clear & Check (pre-start)
At least one pair of boxes should be available before the Call-up for competitors to ‘clear’ and ‘check’ their SI cards. Often an ‘SIAC test’ is also available.
-Check (during start)
It is very common for there to be a Start Official with a box to ‘check’ all competitors’ SI cards somewhere in the start boxes, usually in the -5 or -4 box.
Tip: It is helpful if this person has a spare ‘clear’ box in their pocket to quickly help out any competitor who forgot, so they can keep their place in the start box.
-Start
Necessary for events with punching starts. Number depends on number of competitors starting each minute. The late-starters lane should have its own start box.
Taking in the start: When all the competitors and any late helpers have started, the start will be dismantled.
Tip: It is important to remember that the Start Kite should be left out until the end of the event because it is a control and a fixed point marked on all course maps. It is not unusual for competitors to return to the start to relocate mid-course.
60 seconds with…..Meg and Tom!
Meg Baker and Tom Dutton answering questions from the Warrens
What’s your role in the club?
Tom: We’ve both been members for a few years. Last year I became a committee member as welfare secretary, which I interpreted as continuing to bring cake to events and forgetting to attend committee meetings.
Meg: General enthusiast!
How long have you been orienteering?
Both: About 5 years for both of us.
How did you get into the sport?
Both: Eryri harriers’ night street orienteering when we lived in N Wales, although we didn’t really realise it was orienteering until we moved to Durham and Meg started working with Pippa Archer (previously of CLOK). We entered a Scottish 6 days and joined NN.
What’s your warm-up routine?
Tom: See ‘what do you eat before your run’
Meg: The walk to the start is often enough.
What’s your best result?
Tom: I was the proud caretaker of the Plessey Challenge Rampant Reindeer for one year.
Meg: Any blue where I have beaten Dave.
What do you eat before your run?
Tom: Toothpaste cake, before, during and after.
Meg: Banana or half a sandwich if running around lunchtime. Toothpaste cake afterwards if there is any left.
Thumb compass or base-plate?
Tom: Thumb compass
Meg: Thumb compass, but it needs to have a bezel.
Do you take compass bearings?
Both: Yes, of varying accuracy!
What’s your favourite orienteering area?
Tom: Other than Low Burnhall… Arisaig maybe, one of our first big events (Scottish 6 days). The first leg was huge over an open mountainside, felt very epic!
Meg: I like sand dunes, have had a lot of fun at Redcar, Roanhead and Roseisle.
Lycra or baggy?
Tom: Baggy.
Meg: Lycra.
Moorland or forest?
Tom: Moorland
Meg: Forest
Urban or cross country?
Tom: Urban if I want to be competitive, cross country for an adventure
Meg: Cross country is always prettier.
Do you pace count?
Tom: No
Meg: Never got the hang of it. Still at the stage where I run along thinking “this would be a good time to pace count”!
What’s your worst mistake?
Tom: At Creag Dubh, after 3 hours of fighting through forest and mountain, turning into the finish field and sprinting to the finish, straight past the last control without dibbing it.
Meg: Also at Creag Dubh! It took me an hour to find the first control (looking for a boulder on a hillside covered in blooming boulders and vegetation), luckily that gave lots of time for elephant tracks to develop for the rest of the controls, so things improved after that.
Are you a results nerd?
Tom: Yes, love racing route gadget blobs and looking at progressograms
Meg: When I remember to, I can get really into all the data on route gadget, especially the progressograms.
What do you think of Routegadget?
Tom: More people should use it!
Meg: It’s great!
North East Junior Squad
Jacob Li
On Saturday 2nd of March, me, Oliver and Thomas were dropped off at Captain Cook’s monument car park near Great Ayton. We then walked to the forest on the east side of the monument where we got organised into our groups by our coaches.
First, we did some pacing on contours and compared it to pacing on flat ground. Then, we practised contouring with around 15 different controls. Me and Oliver were in the same group and we both found this very easy.
After that, we were split into different relay teams with the rest of the squad. I was in a team with two people from CLOK called Isla and Nell and I was doing the medium course. I was second back for my course (it was a mass start) and the person doing the short course was back as well. The person on my team doing the long course decided to walk the entire thing so Oliver’s team won because the person doing the long course for his team came back first.
The final thing we did in the training was compass bearings. We had to bear to a control and on the control there were some caramel wafers hidden. Somebody was so motivated, they fell down a tree trying to find it. Then somebody else found the wafers and we shared them out.
For the night, we stayed at Great Ayton Village Hall, which had wifi and heating, and had beans, rice and potatoes for dinner. After dinner we played lots of different board games like UNO. In the morning, we had eggy bread and hot cross buns. We also did some map geeking for the acorn event. Then we got picked up and drove to the event which took place at Great Ayton Moor.
For the event, we didn’t have any start times but I did short green; Thomas was doing blue and Oliver did light green. The course I did was easier than I expected, although I had a bit of trouble finding control number 2, because I had a dodgy bearing, and control number 11 because I went on an unmarked path on the map, which led me further north than I was meant to go.
Other than that, I did okay and came 3rd on my course. Thomas came 2nd on his course and so did Oliver. After that I did a bit of socialising and went home.
Please send any contributions for the December newsletter to [email protected] by Wednesday 3rd Decemeber.