OO Cup in Umeå, North Sweden

Throughout the event, Andy and Rosie posted about their experience on the chat site - below is a summary:

Umeå is the largest city and capital of Norrland, with a large university creating a vibrant student-based city culture with lots of good food places and bars.

Rosie and Andy stayed in a hostel-type accommodation in central Umeå and used the bus services provided by the event organizer for transport to and from the events each day.

Day 1, Skravelsjö: very detailed slopes and ridges full of rocky formations. Large sections with fewer details as well as some thickets.

Day 1 proved to be a tough challenge for both Rosie and Andy:

So to our first event on Scandi terrain… and my gosh it’s hard- very technical as you would expect but also really tough physically- loads of boulders and crags of all sizes some clean others mossy and unmapped but all with treacherous holes between them and many requiring advanced rock climbing skills to get past. Paths were virtually non existent and where they did, were difficult to discern owing to the thick heather.

Days 2 and 3, Hössjö: Large sections of very detailed terrain with sections with only a few details. No paths. The area has never been used for orienteering before OOcup!

Rosie had a better, albeit still challenging day 2:

Day 2 was a long event on a new map and sections of fast running were promised. In the event it turned into another testing event over even more complex terrain. Covering the ground presented a physical challenge and trying to match map features to all manner of boulders, knolls ( actually mossy boulders) and cliffs tested the grey matter.... At least I wasn’t last today and had the small victory of being first back to base from the QO/ Devon contingent.

Andy did not have much fun on day 3 after struggling with control 1:

I .. couldn’t interpret the map at all at times, got well lost at one point and therefore generally hated the whole experience... control#1 250m - couldn’t find it. After floundering for 15 mins, came back to the start and tried again- 21 mins for 250m and already in a relatively foul mood. The terrain is really tough physically and very difficult to maintain a straight bearing led line so the good orienteers ( basically all the Scandinavians who do this every weekend) pick off the point features as they go along and arrive at the control- sounds so easy.

Day 4, Tavelsjö: beautiful nordic forest with a nice lake nearby.

Things improved on day 4, a long event:

So day#4 was a long event on a “fast and runnable” terrain with marshy flat sections separating more technical hilly areas with the usual ( by now) masses of rock and contour features. For me the whole thing went much better by maintaining contact with the map almost at all times but with the very unusual ( by local terrain standards) of having some more obvious line and area features to confirm and/or relocate to if required.

Day 5, Klabböle: another beautiful area where extremely detailed slopes exchange with some “empty” forest with few details. This terrain was used for Swedish national championship in 2010!

Andy enjoyed the terrain on the final day, beating a few rivals in the process:

Day#5- final day ( medium event) on terrain… and what an area! The organisers certainly saved the best till last- in the north of the map lies Klabberget a highly detailed rock covered hill with very detailed contour changes where loss of contact with the map could be horrendous with virtually nothing to relocate to unless you went a long way off the hill. My course had my first six controls on the hill and fortunately after a shaky start (12 mins for a 200m leg) went generally well.

Overall they both enjoyed the experience:

This was our third OO Cup and all have been wonderfully organised, cheap to enter and on excellent areas using very high standard maps. It’s not too daunting to be there whatever your standard or ability as each day there are not so competitive open classes as well as the standard age classes in short and long variants- the competition usually attracts about 1000 to 1500 entries so is not too huge but still attractive to better orienteers from all over Europe and further so one can get the opportunity to compete with (and against!) them. The few brits that did compete, including us, were generally just pleased to get through each day successfully and almost invariably came at the bottom of the results tables- but that’s not the point- this is holiday orienteering at its best, offering a chance to visit a new area, meet new and old friends, and compete in a friendly way in beautiful surroundings.

Full results: https://www.orienteeringonline...

Read the full blog: https://chat.quantockorienteer...

Thanks to Andy and Rosie for sharing their experience with us.