Coming up

Sarum Saunter, Font Hill Sun 5 March

Just 45 mins east of Yeovil, there is an annual regional event in one of Wiltshire's best few areas. Many members will know it from the club team event (Compass Sport Trophy) in Spring 2015. For added interest, an additional private wood has been added to the competition area. Sarum are advertising it as a perfect event for families. It's possible to enter on the day, subject to map availability.

Link to Sarum OC's website / final details

Welsh Champs, Merthyr Mawr, Sat & Sun 4/5 March

You don't have to be Welsh and you don't have to be a potential champion to enter. Swansea Bay Orienteering Club are organising this open pair of events, near the M4 and Bridgend. It's 1 hr 40 mins from the Taunton area. About half a dozen QO members have currently registered to go. It's really different to what we have in Somerset! There's no entry on the day and online entry has closed, but late entry is possible by contacting SBOC, subject to map availability.

Link to the event details on SBOC's Facebook page

Link to Final Details on SBOC's website

Guide to areas and terrain, including sand dunes

Taking up the dune challenge

I attended a double header on the dunes at Merthyr Mawr on the near side of Porthcawl in November 2015. There was a few square kilometres of warrens, basically dunes bound together with vegetation, all very runnable but fiendishly complicated.

I had tried and failed three times at the complex dunes of the Cornwall club Kerno’s Penhale Sands several years back but was determined to succeed this time and recorded a decent time.

The techniques that worked for me were:

• to only run as fast as my understanding of the map
• to run my own race and not get distracted

• to get up high - usually only a 10m climb- to survey the area to clarify my position where necessary
• to run very hard whenever possible, looking for big features.
• to relocate to a line or large vegetation feature if in trouble

The first times I ran in such areas I couldn’t understand how anyone could run without getting immediately lost, so confusing was the map to me and so repetitive the terrain. I remembered quite vividly my disappointments at Penhale, hence my decision to get in practice before the Welsh 5 Days festival of Summer 2016 when nearby Kenfig Burrows was used twice.

I appreciated the effort SBOC made to attract visitors from afar. By making it a double-header, they made it worth my while having an overnight stay. With plenty of holiday accommodation in the area, it was easy to book the night before. Saturday was a low key event with registration and download run out the back of a car. Sunday was a Welsh galoppen (regional league event) which to my surprise, only 85 attended.

Merthyr Mawr is part of a shifting dune system and contains the highest dunes in the UK. The dunes once shifted inland so they entirely covered medieval settlements. They were later deliberately bound down (the dunes) by vegetation that was introduced. The result was dream orienteering terrain!

Jeff Pakes

• Merthyr Mawr was once used for some of the shooting of Lawrence of Arabia
• It was mapped 20 years ago by QO's Simon Beck

extracted from QuOnicle, April 2016