Spring Orienteering

There are plenty of opportunities for orienteering in the Dublin & Wicklow areas this spring, with even more events if you are to travel a bit further. Watch out for pre-entry deadlines and dates for price increases, though: the big events usually have a sliding scale of entry fees to encourage us to enter early.

Here are some dates and events to watch out for:

The Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival at Easter in the English Lake District will be a great event, on some of the best terrain in Britain: Lancaster University, Bigland, High Dam and Dale Park. See here for details. Entries close on 12th March.

The following Sunday, April 16th, the Leinster Championships are at Camaderry, near the Wicklow Gap. It’s all open mountain (some very complex) and there’s a limit of 200. Entries will be via Fabian4. See details here.

The Irish Championships are in Wicklow this year, from April 28th to May 1st. Four days, with a Friday evening sprint at Glending, Blessington, then the Middle at Stranahely in the Glen of Imaal, the Long at Tiglin/Devil’s Glen near Ashford and the Relay on a new map of the Tottenham Estate, across the Devil’s Glen from the day before. CNOC are our hosts and you can see the details here. Entries close on 11th April.

The British Sprint and Middle Distance Championships are in Northern Ireland the week after IOC23, with plenty of orienteering in the week between the two events. The ten days of events is billed as the “Emerald Isle Orienteering Festival” so make sure you check it out. There’ll be some great orienteering in there: sprint, middle, long, relay, urban … you name it! See the details of the O-Fest here. Entries close on 11th April.

The next 3ROC event is at Carrick Mountain, Glenealy on 2nd April and organiser Máire Walsh has been approaching 3ROC members to help on the day. If you want to enter, online entries close on Thursday 30th March so make sure to get in before then. Here is the link for pre-entry.

Leinster League dates:

Fauna, Donard 12th March

Brockagh, Laragh 26th March

Carrick, Glenealy 2nd April

The full Irish fixtures list is here. Remember to check back often as new events are being added all the time, and remember to watch out for closing dates: for local events the entries usually close a couple of days beforehand. This allows the organisers get the maps printed and put everyone into the results system beforehand. (That reminds me – if you have your own SI card, make sure you register it on the Orienteering Ireland SI database so that your details will automatically be entered in the results system once your SI card number is put in. And organisers – remember to upload the current SI Archive before your event so that it is up to date!). You can check that yor name, club, age class and preferred course are right in the archive too. See here. For more information about SportIdent, see here.

See you in the forest!