Volunteer at your peril!!!

How to get involved in Orienteering without really trying.

Ramblings of an Octogenarian!

‘You’ll give us a hand won’t you! How often in Orienteering has the innocent newcomer said ‘Yes’, without realising that this was the beginning of a slippery slope that would change your life forever!

All events need helpers and in the pre-electronic age this was even more critical, with large teams needed for Registration, Starts, and above all the Finish and Timing system.

In 1976 the Warrens saw an advert, in the local paper for the Boxing Day Canter at Uddens Plantation near Ferndown and like all ignorant newcomers arrived late when everyone knew what they were doing! Trevor was in the process of briefing runners and we set off with a map, but no compass and not much of a clue what to do. After an hours walk we headed for the Finish to be shouted at to run! My response was ‘Why’! Evidently we weren’t put off and a few weeks later we were phoned up to be asked, ‘Could you help on the Start for a bit? We were terribly flattered to be asked as newcomers to actually help, not knowing that man-power was desperately short.  We did our shift and found that we really enjoyed meeting people, began to learn about the various jobs that go to make up an event.

Registration meant sitting with another member in one of up to 5 cars taking money, writing names on lists and on a ‘Control Card’ ,and allocating a start time. A big event could have 10 or more courses. Barbara, being very good with people got that job! The Start was initially using some ones watch, hopefully synchronised with the Finish, and blowing a whistle. Once through the Start the competitor had to copy their course down from a ‘Master Map’, which could be difficult if it was raining! Worst of all you may have to look forward to a copying a second master map half way round the course when you were thoroughly steamed up! Of course the maps weren’t waterproof.

The Finish was a very complex business involving a large team which needed to work in shifts. I’ll not go into it now but the amazing thing is that it worked, even for large events such as the JK and results could be on display within a few minutes. Working in teams meant that you quickly met and got to know most of your fellow club members, which was something that we came to value and is not as easy to achieve in the electronic era.

Having started Orienteering in 1976, by the summer of 1977 we heard rumours of a ‘big’ event to be held in the SW in 1979 called the JK! The Relay competition was the WIM event and as our founder, Ron Wilton, and Ian Keith were the Planners, everyone in the club was encouraged to get involved. The location was at the aptly named ‘Bramble Brook’ at the top of Haldon Hill about 3 miles SW of Exeter. As Assistant to the Organiser I was involved in all sorts of things, from taking huge rolls of tape (off-cuts from Wilton Carpet factory) and large wooden stakes, down to Exeter in the back of the car. In those days a control site at a major event consisted of two large stakes driven into the ground with a cross piece screwed on to make a trestle. Two control punches were then screwed onto the trestle before finally the flag was hung. This wasn’t a quick job! As well as clearing the Relay Arena changeover site of brashings we judiciously cut down a few trees, cutting  channel for incoming runners through what had been a thicket. The details of the event are history but it all seemed to work and we even got to take part in the Individual event at Fernworthy.

After that baptism of fire we were regarded as ‘experts’ so there was no way back from volunteering and you felt that you had to learn more of the skills of the sport. Mapping was the next task to learn and we started at Godshill with the memorable instruction of ‘Go and have a look at the area’, because we’d like you to map an piece in the New Forest called ‘Avon Water’. This proved to be a major challenge because there was no base map and the promised air-photos from the Ordnance Survey were not forthcoming because they were on strike! You started with a blank piece of paper, a sighting Compass and a measuring tape with Alison dragooned into holding the other end in freezing weather. Having made start we learned that the planned event had  changed from being a local club event into the ‘Southern Championships’, in new money a level A event! Maps in the 1980’s were drawn using pen and ink, on tracing film with one tracing for each colour, and of course the tracings had to match perfectly for the map to be printed correctly. Once the map was printed each course had to over printed using a simple, yet odd, Scandinavian frame printer. It took hours, often went wrong and after being checked by the Controller maps had to be put into poly bags and heat sealed. How things have changed, but event preparation was a major and labour intensive job with the ever present risk of errors ruining a print run. The actual event was in 1981 and had its own nightmares! Scheduled for March, it was postponed due to an outbreak of ‘Foot and Mouth’ disease and as we as a family were taking postal entries we had to do the whole process twice, by hand, once at the Scottish 6 days, before it took place in December. On the day, a fierce SE Hurricane and Blizzard struck at 12.30pm and both competitors and helpers have a whole fund of stories to tell if you ask them!

It may seem odd but we really enjoyed the adventure and now as a member of the SWOA Committee I was in the thick of things! Next came JK89, at Stourhead and Longleat masterminded by BOK but with a major day input from WIM. The whole family had jobs and I was acting as Controller of day 2 at Stourhead with Peter Robson of SOC as the external Controller. This is when Barbara showed her skills as a Controller acting as my critic and we spend many hours in the forest checking and arguing about control sites for some superb courses planned by Dudley Budden of BOK.

We were by now a completely Orienteering family and travelled the UK, the Swedish O Ringen and even combined an Orienteering event in the Swiss Jura with an alpine summer holiday. One day at the Scottish 6 day I was approached by Erik Peckett and Brian Parker who suggested that I headed a team to plan JK 97 on Penhale Sands in Cornwall. Having recovered from the shock I managed to recruit Dudley Budden of BOK and Graham Pring of KERNO to join me, with Tim Pribul (CHIG) as the Controller and so began two years very enjoyable work. Those of you who have competed on Penhale will know its daunting challenges -a sea of high sand dunes some of which have depressions on the top of them just to make navigation more difficult. One error and you can be lost for some time! On one event at Penhale the planner wanted to use a small wet depression but as the water table in the dunes varies, on the day of the event it was dry. The solution was to place a washing up bowl full of water with a toy duck floating in it! During day1 of the JK the Planners got a message saying that a competitor had found an unexploded shell near to a control! A rapid investigation by our scientific expert, Brian Parker, resulted in him kicking the old empty shell case into the bushes!!This was the last really big event, almost 4000 competitors, to use manual punching and we even managed to get two individual days out of much of the same area, because we believed, correctly, that no one could learn the geography of the area in one day! Almost all SW clubs were involved, with Perran Sands Holiday Park block booked and caused amazement to the locals who did not believe that Orienteers could be so well behaved!

Over weekend the ‘Bouncers’ at the camp had nothing to do and were sent home. On the Sunday of the event a member of the camp shop was sent out to scour the district for a fresh supply of bananas and as many copies of the Sunday Times as they could find! The weather was brilliantly hot and sunny, but whilst we, the planners and outdoor officials were sweltering out in the dunes, Barbara and the enquiries team were shivering inside a cold hall on the camp site.

Statistics: 4,400 runners, 14,000 maps all hand checked by and heat sealed in to polybags by teams of WIM members, requiring a 21cwt van to get them to Cornwall. A marquee full of willing KERNO helpers managed to process ‘control cards’ and get results on display within 20 mins of a runner finishing. It was quite an experience and many of us stayed on for the rest of Easter week to enjoy a Cornish Holiday!

I revisited Penhale in 1995 joining with KERNO to plan the British Relays. Commuting 165 miles to work meant that visits had to be well planned and one of them coincided with the legendary weekend when severe weather in the SW forced the RAF to evacuate youth teams taking part in the ‘10 Tors’ on Dartmoor. The dunes were not a nice place to be that day, with sleet and snow! Many WIM’s were involved in all aspects of the event and my stalwart team of control hangers and collectors did a great job, firstly on a beautiful warm sunny Saturday afternoon, followed by a Sunday of gales and torrential rain. The Results tent almost collapsed and the map issue team had difficulty persuading runners to leave the map issue tent to go to the changeover waiting area. Cagoules were very much the compulsory dress of the day and Relay spectators were a rarity.

SWOA made JK 97 one of landmark events of the sport and the team planning the World Champs 1999 centred on Inverness were scouting round asking for volunteers to help. We said ‘Yes’ but were not prepared for the news that Barbara and I were asked to recruit and lead a team from SWOA to handle the organisation side for the WOC Relays at Avielochan about 2 miles from Aviemore on Speyside. How we got to become ‘World Championship Day Organisers’ I’ll never know but I found myself making several 700 mile journeys by Sleeper to meet the local team on site. We travelled up by car for the event, which was integrated into the Scottish 6 Days, and for a week became almost ‘locals’ making purchases at the local timber and DIY shops and helping to build an impressive arena for competitors and spectators. Our Scottish Orienteering friends were amazing as were a very gifted SWOA team and the truly spectacular event with 3000 spectators got into the local media but the national press were not prepared to come unless they were paid! It was only in the 2015 World Champs that the BBC made a good attempt to show Orienteering to the world even if it was on the Gaelic Alba Channel!

Back closer to home mapping was an ever present pastime and I acted as Controller for several SOC November Classics, BOK TROTs  plus the Midland Championships on Cannock Chase, which further broadened our circle of friends, before being asked to take on Controlling Day 1 of JK 2003 at Hambledon near Henley. This of course involved a lot of travelling to and from the Chilterns, but I had a first rate team of Planners so visits could be kept to a minimum. One of the memories of this event held in sweeping open beech woodland with huge views along the Thames to Henley were the ever present Red Kites which had re-established themselves in the area.

I can’t finish without mention of the TVOC Compass-Sport Cup event at Bradenham near High Wycombe. I had been volunteered by John Thompson whilst walking to the start on the last day of  the Oban, Scottish 6 days and this was to be the event when Barbara and I last worked as a Controlling team. Two minds are usually better than one, particularly if you have both an expert and person who is not afraid to criticise in a positive manner. This is the way we worked and I have been blessed to have Barbara, my best friend and critic, by my side for the whole of our time in Orienteering, and little did I know when we helped at our first event that I was working with a future British Champion!

‘Volunteering’ hasn’t been so much of an effort, it has mostly been a real sense of satisfaction and I hope that in a small way has contributed to a lot of people having enjoyable experiences taking part in the sport that we love.

John Warren

        

John and Barbara at the Scottish Six Days in 2013