Words & Photo: Lisa de Speville
What a beautiful evening for a jaunt in my favourite of Jo’burg’s parks. Just over 80 participants lined up for the first AR Club Summer Series event. We opted for a bit of a different twist instead of a point-to-point route; here participants had only one hour to locate as many controls as possible, choosing their own routes.
There were many newcomers, sent off with maps for the very first time. They evidently all managed quite well as we didn’t lose any people in the park – everyone accounted for at the finish.
A number of fast ‘n experienced orienteering regulars cleaned up the course by locating all 48 controls. We sent some of them back out there again with a zippy point-to-point route.
We’re always delighted to have children learning navigation skills and for this reason we don’t charge any entry fee for little ones. In addition to a number of quite small people, we had a good number of teens participating (and a few dogs too).
And dare we boast of our first international participant *grin* Pieter Mulder is out here from Switzerland and he came through; he returns to winter, snow and mountains on Monday.
We’re working on variations for each of these Wednesday night event – to keep you challenged and entertained.
Please remember to pre-enter for AR Club Summer Series #2 on Wednesday, 29 January 2014 by noon on Tuesday. It really helps us to know how many people are coming so that we can print and prepare enough maps and control cards.
It goes without saying that many hands make light work – thank you helpers.
Lisa de Speville and Garry Morrison have been updating the map of Delta Park drawn by Jeremy Green back in 2012. This is still a work in progress and they’ll continue to tweak the map every week. They’ve also handled all the planning for these events.
Liz took care of registration tonight.
Sarah loaned us additional punches.
Fred brought along his camera to catch you in action – photos are on the AR Club Facebook page.
Grant gave Lisa and Garry a hand in getting the controls out; he also collected the ones that he put out.
In addition, Alex, Steph, Piers and Jani jumped in to assist Garry with control collecting.
See you next week,
Lisa
