The first of three sessions for WCOC. About 14 people turned up of varied standards.
We used part of the Eel Tarn area in Eskdale, above Goat Crag, just above the bracken.
The session was on map-reading and contour simplification. I used three shortish loops of about 1.5K. Warm up was a 30 minute walk to the start area, with people having to find the start of, and then follow a line shown on a map. This was made harder by not knowing when they walked onto the map. Further warm-up was by way of putting out controls. One person was unsure of his control and someone else helped to check (and move) this.
Before the main session started I asked people to organise themselves along a line where the far left was “Orienteer mainly by compass” and the far right was “Orienteer mainly by map reading”. Most were towards one extreme or the other. I suggested that they practice at the other extreme during this exercise.
Most managed at least two of the loops, with some repetition where they had made a mistake or wanted to try a different approach to a leg.
Warm down was control collection and the walk back down.
The loops and the differentiation using the line worked well. The line exercise walking to the start made an otherwise dull walk more interesting.