Lake District Adventures

Over Half term myself and Danny spent three days enjoying some fine winter weather in the Lake District. Day 1 took in Grasmere, Helm Crag, Greenup Edge and Eagle crag, before stopping at Rosthwaite camping barn for the night.
Day 2 was a big climb out of the valley up High Spy and a lovely ridge run down to Cat Bells. This was followed by a brief dip in a chilly Derwent water and a nice warm bed (compared to the previous night) in Keswick Youth Hostel. Day three was up onto the ridge on the eastern side of Derwent Water taking in Bleaberry fell, High Seat and High Tove before dropping down to Harrop Tarn and the car park below to finish. All in all a cold, tiring few days which were enjoyed immensely and will no doubt be followed by more adventures in the future (I hope). Below is a selection of the best pictures:
For Dan's slant on the 3 days click on Dan's fell running blog on the PFO website/in the right hand column of this webpage.

Greenup Edge Ice!!
Blencathra and Derwent Water
Borrowdale
Harrop Tarn

Winter Wonderland!!

Well winter has arrived in style wilth several inches of snow across Rossendale. After a later than usual start we made it up Cowpe (not bothering to actually reach the summit), through the quarries and over towards the wind turbines. Quote of the day goes to Danny with this offering "Head to the one with wings on it". Reffering of course to a wind turbine at the time- badly affected by snow blindness at the time I hope. Some pictures are below...

The frozen waterfall!

Danny's Bit:

Ever warming British winters are making snow a bit of a rarity in Lancashire. This morning however, we were shocked to see around 10cm of snow in the valleys and up to 50cm on the hills. The hills were calling, but so was the Lancashire Schools XC at Witton Park. After much deliberation, we eventually decided to try the roads only to reach the car park after the race had started. So we got our snowy hill run in the end...





Running over Cowpe Moss was tough going as underneath the snow and the tussocks were frozen bogs, incredibly energy sapping; not nice at all!

Frozen Waterfalls en route, we were considering starting the Lancashire Ice Climbing Club:




All in all, a very good 7.8 miles which took slightly longer than expected due to repeated immature endeavours mainly involving snow balls and yellow snow. Snow makes children out of us all you know.

The Pennine Bridleway above Cowpe Reservoir:



Ironically, by the amount of car tracks seen today, people with gas guzzling Chelsea tractors seem to enjoy driving on the gravel tracks in the snow, but it's mainly them who are making snowy winters a thing of the past in Britain.

Saturday Morning Run - 26th Jan - Great Hameldon Hill

50mph winds made for hard running. We did a 12 mile (19.3km) loop taking in Most of Cribden, Great Hameldon (409m - SD 794 289) and Hameldon Hill (399m - SD 810 287).

Winds around the side of Cribden were so strong, huge effort was required to put one foot infront of the other. Thankfully, we did have the wind on our backs for some of the duration, especially noticeable on the slog up Great Hameldon.

Looking Down The Valley Towards Peel Tower



Great Hameldon Hill Summit, The View South



Great Hameldon Hill Summit, Windswept



On the path to Hameldon Hill we came across some rather icy 'puddles' which turned out to be knee deep icy bogs.

Upon returning to Loveclough, we did come across what would be an excellent orienteering forest, a nice surprise when the legs were beginning to burn. All in all an excellent run, apart from the gales, perfect weather!

Click here to download the route for viewing in Google Earth. You will need to have Google Earth installed on your computer.

News Flash - Finals Here We Come

Pendle Forest Orienteering Club are through to the National Final of the Compass Sport Trophy!

After battling with the mud and rain at Frodsham, PFO came out ahead of local rivals SELOC to ensure a place in the inaugural final. After missing out on qualifying in previous years, this is a leap forward for the club. PFO will compete against the cream of British orienteering clubs at Sutton Park, Birmingham on the October 18th.

Needless to say this is partly due to the outstanding efforts of our Norway Juniors, with Alex Willis and Sophie Horrocks scoring the maximum possible on Blue and Light Green courses respectively. Liam and Ste also contributed to the clubs success.

Mountain Bike Orienteering Part 2

I woulod like to add to Danny's comments about the event last Sunday and say that it was a really good event; different to what we both normally do (being 4 hours long!) but enjoyable for the novelty if nothing else. I have added a picture my Dad took as we raced away from the start having already planned our route (we did however promptly make a 180 degree error on reaching the main road- less haste more speed i think!).

British Schools Orienteering Champs Report

SUCCESS mapped out: Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School’s year 12 orienteering team (front left) with other runners, who competed in the British Schools’ National finals at Dorset.

Rossendale Free Press Report Tops in the end 7/12/2007

BACUP and Rawtenstall Grammar School’s year 12 orienteers have been crowned national schools champions.
They beat more than 70 school teams from the UK and Northern Ireland to claim the British Schools title at the army’s tank training ground at Bovington, Dorset.
And BRGS also took third place in the overall team category – based on the best nine finishers from years seven to 13 – for the second successive year.
There was also a silver medal for Emily Lester, who marked her final appearance at the championships by taking second place in the year 13 category
And the new year seven girls team of Eilidh Brailey, Esther Clare and Heather Cudworth completed a fine haul by taking a team bronze medal.
The winning year 12 team comprised Liam Taylor, Alex Willis, Stephen Horrocks and Jack Heyworth with the first three finishers counting.
It was a second taste of national glory for Liam and Alex, who were part of the BRGS year seven team who won their category five years ago.
BRGS teacher Tom Gray was extremely pleased with the school’s performance.
He said: ‘Liam and Alex were in the team that won in year seven and the team has just got better and better through the years. Last year was our first time on the podium in the overall category and we were hoping to go one better but were third again.
‘It was a really good achievement with the spread of results for our team because we had counters who were new children in year seven. We have good orienteers coming through to replace the ones who will be leaving and we are hoping for another good team result next year.’
There were a number of other top 10 performances in almost Arctic conditions over a range of courses suited to each school year group. They were: Liam Taylor (fourth) year 12 boys, Sophie Horrocks (sixth) year 10 girls, Paul Burdekin (seventh) year seven boys, Eilidh Brailey (seventh) year seven girls, Alex Willis (ninth) year 12 boys, Danny Hoyle (ninth) year 13 boys and Alix McDermott (10th) year 11 girls.

With thanks to the Rossendale Free Press for Permission to use the above photo and article.

Awesome Limestone Descents

Nothing like 4 hours hard riding in the Dales to cure the Christmas overeating!

On 30th December 2007, Alex Willis and myself ditched the running shoes, for a day in the saddle in a mountain bike orienteering event.

Organised by Kudu Bikes Triathlon Club, the event was a competition between two disciplines, running and mountain biking. It's aim to see whether the runners, with the advantage of footpaths (offering much shorter root choices), could beat the mountain bikers with the clear advantage of speed. To even the out the event, there were two compulsory checkpoints for the bikers, which the runners could ignore. Also, one particularly speedy bridleway was made out of bounds to bikers.

Starting in the centre of Hawes, we headed out on the roads to get the 2 compulsory controls. Following this was a steep climb on forest tracks featuring several switchbacks. After this very painful climb, we were rewarded with a brilliant downhill taking us over some great limestone steps.

Back into Hawes we set out on our second loop, this was a steep climb onto a huge Roman Road running along the ridge of Whether Fell. The next step of the journey offered some fantastic technical riding over open moorland. The kind of track good enough to find it's way onto a magazine cover.

The last descent into Hawes' neighbouring town Gayle, was very technical with deep ruts and tight corners. It follows that I took flight over the handlebars, thankfully, no serious damage. A quick blast through Gayle took us back into Hawes and to the finish. We finished with 140 points in 14th place.

The winner was the speedier mountain bike, yet surprisingly the runners occupied many of the high placings.

British Schools Orienteering Championships 2007

Liam Taylor, Alex Willis, Stephen Horrocks and Jack Heyworth are the Year 12 Boys British Schools Orienteering Champions. They completed a wet and windy challenging course over the British Army’s Tank Training ground at Bovington, Dorset in November.

B.R.G.S. was placed 3rd as a School in the Large Secondary Schools section. Sophie Horrocks Alex Willis and Liam Taylor were amongst the nine runners counting towards this place.

Tockholes Training Day

The aim of the training day was to provide training for all abilities within the PFO membership. Alex and Stephen (with some parental help) started planning the day in October. Due to the wide range of ability and experience within the club the challenge was to provide a wide enough range of training courses to be of interest to everyone.

The training was split into three groups, novice, intermediate and experienced. Within each group they planned three courses. The planning involved visiting Tockholes, several planning sessions and numerous hours at the computer using mapping software to plan the courses. All this on top of their normal schoolwork and other commitments.

On the day around 35 people (including a large number of juniors) turned up despite the cold damp November weather. The courses they did ranged from Scandinavian style training to micro courses.

All those who attended seemd to enjoy themselves and hopefully gained something from the day.

Feedback comments recieved included:-

"Thanks so much for yesterday's training- really appreciated all your efforts and I certainly gained experience from the varied courses that you had set up.
If you do have any time for coaching young people, you are always welcome at my school, Northern Primary in Bacup"

"Thank you for all the hard work you put in to today's event. I know the CTK children got a lot out of it and enjoyed the stream too. I enjoyed being able to do some of it on my own too. Well done to you all, and hope there is another similar day again very soon"

"Fantastic day out! It was apparent just how much effort the organisers had put in; really appreciated by all. It was good to see people from a variety of skill levels training together. It was a valuable experience for everybody training on the day."

"On behalf of the BRGS 'little-uns', thanks for all the time and effort you put into the training day. It was a great success; the minibus was a cacophony of chatter all the way back to Rawtenstall . Thanks Again"

Alex and Stephen gained valuable experience which hopefully they can use again, maybe for another club training day in 2008!

Hamish + Kate Willis

Club Training Day

On 10th November myself and Stephen are planning a training day for the all club members including those juniors at affiliated schools. This will follow on from a similar day we organised over the summer for a group of primary school children from CTK in Burnley.

This was done as part of our Orienteering Young Leaders Award completed as part of our Silver Duke of Edinburgh's award. The November training day is designed for adults and children and for all ranges of ability so that they can improve their skills and hopefully become better orienteers as a result of the day. The other aim of the day is for a social feel with members engaging over a packed lunch in the woods.

On offer on the day will be a total of 10 different courses, all aiming to challenge a different skill needed for orienteering from teamwork (somtimes useful when lost) to planning ahead of yourself and picking out the very minor details in the map.

We have been planning the day for the last month with several visits to the area and a few planning meetings in the comfort of our own homes (plus an e-mail conference)

Watch this space for a full report on the day.

Yvette Baker Trophy, Sunday 21st October

On sunday the 21st october, a team of 10 pfo juniors went up to caldbeck to represent the club in the annual yvette baker trophy event, for club juniors. it is an interclub event, where juniors from each club race against juniors from half a dozen other clubs.
this year, on a whole, we did not do as well as previously, and may miss out on the national final. the main reason for this was the relative inexperience of some of the newer runbeers, and also the fact that many of the team members had been away on a physically draining north west junior squad training day on saturday.

Injury :(

Since the training weekend detailed below I have had pain in my right knee. It wasn't too painful, so I rested it by not training at all for a week. The following weekend was the British School's Score Championships. My knee had settled down a bit after a weeks rest so I ran at the Score Champs (coming 4th in Boy's Year 12/13). BRGS Upper School Boy's Team won the trophy :) (best 6 scores from years 10-13 counting).

However after the minibus journey home from Sussex my knee was painful again. So I rested it again and went to see a physiotherapist. She diagnosed that my knee cap was rubbing, as it was not moving correctly up and down its groove in my femur. This was due to the fact that my quads were overdeveloped on the outside of my thigh and underdeveloped on the inside. This caused my knee cap to be pulled diagonally to the outside as opposed to the inside.

To counteract this I have to do squats on one leg and weights in the gym to build up the inside of my thigh as well as resting from training/running for two weeks. At the moment my right leg diameter measures one inch less than my left both above and below my knee. By the time I go back for a check with my physio in two weeks I need to have built up the muscle mass and have equal diameters on both legs!

I'm doing all the prescribed exercises and hoping to be fit again for the next NWJS training weekend and Delamere Forest event early in November.

Fundraising

The North West Junior Squad try to raise money throughout the year. They do this mainly by having cake stalls at major orienteering events in the North West Region. Juniors (or their parents and grandparents!) bake cakes, buns and biscuits and bring them to the events to be sold. The juniors also help to man the cake stall and sell the cakes before and after their runs. There is usually a hungry crowd of people wanting to buy cakes after they have run their courses. Some buy cakes to take home as well. Home made jams and chutney are also sold at certain times of year.

The cake stall money is used for many of the North West Junior Squad expenses. Part of it is used to help subside the Norway trip and helps towards the cost of Norway Tour Tops.

From September 2005 to August 2006 the cake stalls raised £1999. From Sept 2006 to August 2007 they raised £1694.

This year the squad is having a stall at a Dickensian Christmas Market in the Lake District to sell home made mince pies etc. A stall at a similar market in 2005 raised £937 from the sale of cakes, jams etc.

Fund raising for the Norway tour helps to reduce the cost to each squad member going. Some of the other ways the squad are raising money for Norway 2008 are :-selling quiz sheets, bag packing at local supermarkets, selling cake recipe books, selling home made Christmas cakes .

NWJS weekend 29/30th September (2)

Saturday:
The training is detailed in Alex's contribution but I would like to add that for me aswell the time trial was very wierd on that map, also I developed a syndrome of getting to right on top of the flag and then not being able to see it for a minute or so and as this happened on 3 controls I wasted approximately 2 and a half minutes (out of 11:19), the fact that we were using training flags placed on the floor and not full size flags was most of the problem.
The rest of the training was good though and the two techniques of simplification and attack points were reinforced by well planned routes to get the most out of the terrain.

Sunday:
On Sunday the whole club attended the BL Regional Event located at HIgh Pike in the Lakes. The location was great and the open fell land gave way to fast times and there was also a good network of paths but fine details close to the controls needed particular attention meaning that the Saturdays training was put into good practice. The weather was good and although not the brightest or hottest day, there was no rain and gave some extremely good conditions to run in.
I ran the JM5L course and found that it was extremely fast running, mistakes cost a large amount of time as you could run straight past a control hidden in a dip, or not run far enough and hit a wrong parrallel (sp?) feature. I only made a single mistake over the whole 8.1km of the course and this was on control 15 were I found an unmarked marsh in a re-entrant almost the same as my control just 100m ahead.
The enjoyable part of this race was the fact that for once I got to stretch out my legs for large sections and as such completed the course in just over an hour only just behind the leader (54mins approx). I believe that I could have run faster I think if it hadn't have been for the trouble of getting to sleep the night before with some of the younger members of the club thinking it funny to annoy everyone else instead of going to sleep, resulting in me being very tired for the event.
Overall this should be a gold standard leaving me just one more to get before the end of the year.

Liam