The HC now has a facebook page so if you haven't seen it already, head on over!


If you see any green writing like this then my sister, the Headless Chicky (or HCy) has invaded AGAIN!




May



Cream O' Galloway
3rd April 2021

A couple weeks prior to the event my family and I went to check how overgrown the paths were and happened to visit at the same time as the local toad population gathered to spawn! In some places you had to watch every step you took in order to avoid the toads and there was even a single confused frog that had also turned up!!

On the day of the event however, there were no toads to be seen - only lots of orienteers! The long course at this event was a 'Norwegian' (map mmemory), though there was also the opportunity to go round as normal. I've only done map memory courses a couple times before but every time I've enjoyed the challenge of remembering enough features to find the control but not too many so you forget it all.
The Headless Chicky set off not long before me with the HCy confusion lost and found



March

Crichton Night activity
24th March 2021

Orienteering is back from another lockdown-caused break and it was really good to be back! It was very cold beforehand so I was a bit reluctant to give up my nice fleeces and go out but eventually I did and it was very fun.
The Headless CHicky started right before me but I caught her up before the first control. The first control was on a large bush/tree in an open area with a path if you went too far (I've included a map section below with the route we took marked on it in red). I ran a lot less far than I had expected to before coming across a path and stopping. My sister then appeared from behind me in a state of excitement becasue she couldn't find the control and I then circled about confusedly as there weren't anywhere near enough large trees (which the HCy says is exactly what she did before I saw her. We then came back to the path which I decided to cross anyway only to discover that it had all been an optical illusion. In the light of our headtorches it had looked somehow like tarmac but it was nothing but grass all along!

We then went to the next control after having a laugh at out own gullibleness. (While I was writing this I mentioned what happened to my parents and apparently there used to be a path there so we probably were seeing the shape of the land where it used to be. Alternatively it was a path ghost, trying to lead us astray in the dark!)
The route to control 2 that we chose required going through a car park, which contained a single car. As we were running past the car my headtorch shone inside and I saw there was a person in the car and got a bit of a fright. I said to the HCy "Oh! There's a person in that car!" which she heard as "Oh! There's a car!" and started laughing at me when she also saw the person inside and got a fright! She then said what I had just tried to tell her which resulted in some confusion.
The last thing to happen was a couple controls later when the HCy and I were racing for the control. Because this was an activity rather than an event there were no punches or SI boxes on the kites so we were pretending to dib them but the Headless Chicky was going too fast, got tangled in the control and managed to pull it mostly out the ground and fall over! We then had to disentangle her but the kite was unharmed (the HCy however scraped her arm but it looks like she will survive the experience!)
The rest of the course went well and we saw some rabbits that were very confused about why there were people running about in the dark.



2021


December

Barhill Plantation: Pits 'n' Bumps
5th December 2020

This year I competed on my own and in a radical change of strategy I completely reversed my tried and tested attack plan! Every year prior I have ALWAYS done the junior course area first so I have at least those in the bag before heading into the long course only area but this year I decided to do the opposite because I tend to get back with plenty time and the junior course controls make a good route to the start/finish area. I helped put out quite a few of the controls so I declared myself non-competitive (which was a shame because I did quite well!).
When I was approaching the short course area I heard a lot of barking and shortly after encountered the Headless Chicky who told me she had come across what she had thought was two controls but had turned out to be two pomeranians wearing bright orange coats! I've heard of cases of mistaken identity where sheep are confused with control kites but never dogs!!
I only got one bonus control this time - the bonus controls (worth 40 as oposed to 10 points) were located in blanked out areas of the map and certain normal controls had map sections showing where they were. I found two of the map section controls but one had a bonus control that I had managed to go right past earlier in the course. The other bonus control I went to clearly hadn't had many visitors because there was a red squirrel running about by it!



November

Crossmichael Wood Night Activity
25th November 2020

A couple of entries ago at the Crichton I claimed that it was my first 'proper' night event but after tonight I must say that I was dreadfully mistaken! Once again I helped put out some of the controls so I (luckily) knew where most of the control sites were beforehand. The long course was a score where you had to get the controls in set groups of three, although there was no time limit for doing so and the starting and finishing controls had to be done in order to guide competitors round a stream that runs through the area. This meant that the first couple controls were very straightforward and on line features but then I crossed the bridge and suddenly I was in the forest with no features visible in any direction! Crossmichael Wood is quite open and the features are fairly subtle and if it weren't for the boundary fences I have no idea how I would have gotten round. Despite it being a little spooky it was still very enjoyable - and to be honest it wasn't that bad because you could see other people's headtorches in the distance. There was one point where I discovered a maze of gorse that I hadn't noticed in the day and got very turned around in but I luckily came out right next to the control! The Headless Chicky got her own scare when she discovered that one of the other orienteers had brought their dog and that said dog was black and white and blended in quite well with the surroundings in the light of her torch!
My run took a bit of a turn when I came across two somewhat rowdy teenagers hanging around one of the control sites and that the control kite cane was snapped so it was lying in the mud. We have had a few cases of attempted vandalism/sabotage of controls over the years and while I wasn't sure if this had been deliberate as there was a rope swing nearby or one of the orienteers could have fallen on it or something. I put the control upright again but ended giving them a hard stare before continuing my run. Unfortunately I was a bit flustered by this encounter and forgot to visit the last control of that triangle so I mispunched without realising.
I had been one of the later starts so by the time I finished most people were back and the Headless Chicky and I set off to collect in controls soon after. The HCy was doing the navigating and insisted that I carry all of the kites AND the boxes!! When we approached the control the teenagers had been hanging around we could hear them yelling at us so we entered the clearing with some trepidation. They had sounded angry but when we arrived we discovered that they had managed to get stuck up a tree and they wanted someone to pass them the rope swing so they could get down! The kite wasn't where I had left as it had been thrown into a tree (a different one from the one they were stuck in) but soon enough the control had been collected in and the idiots helped down from their tree.
Despite mispunching I really enjoyed this event and it has shown me what a night event is really like!

Markhill
7th November 2020

Apparently I haven't orienteered here since 2015! It doesn't feel like its been that long but I will admit I'm not terribly familiar with the wood. There is a walk from the car park to the start which resulted in the formation of a coat tree (photograghed below. Over the past year this phenomena has become a very rare sight as the orienteers that trannsport the coat-seeds have changed their migratory patterns).


I personally had a pretty normal run - although the HCy had a much more eventful time (even though we did much of the course together) so I shall you all about that instead. The HCy started several minutes before me and I wasn't expecting to see her as she can run much faster but by the time I had reached number two I caught her up! This was because she had taken a little unintentional detour and visited number three before number two and after that we (mostly) stuck together.
On one of the occasions that we decided upon different routes the HCy managed to trip over and when she fell kneed herself in the sternum. I only left her on her own for at most five minutes!! After that we stuck together more closely and it was fairly uneventful: we spent a lot of time walking in circles at one control.
On the way to the last control the HCy began to speed up in an attempt to get away from me. The last control was on a path-ditch junction with the finish further down the path. The Headless Chicky was so keen to get away that she reached the path a little past the control and on seeing the finish she forgot about the control and ran for it. By the time I had caught up she had (tragically) punched the finish. I had seen her heading too far but didn't say anything in time because I thought she would realise (some very supportive older sibling behavious here!) and also that the finish was further away. Sadly I was wrong on both counts!
All was not lost however, as on the walk back to the car we visited the ice cream van that can almost always be found at Rockcliffe Beach nearby!



October

Crichton Night Activity
10th October 2020

This was my first proper night event (not counting my brief caper at Iffley and Rose Hill in 2016 that almost ended in disaster and caused my parents to give me a headtorch for Christmas that year!). Despite being a mixture of parkland, hotels and a college much of the Crichton is surprisingly dark at night. This made it much more exciting as I know this area pretty well but in the dark everything looks a little different.
Before I had my run today we saw that we weren't the only ones who had decided to get some exercise as there were bats flying above the car park! I was on the same course as the Headless Chicky but she set off a few minutes before me and I never saw any trace of her the whole way round. I thought I had had a fairly good run so I was very confused but when I got back she still had not returned. It turned out that in the early stages of her run her headtorch had gone out and as a result she had only been able to read the map when under streetlights. Around the halfway point of the course it passed close to the car park so she had persisted in the dark and then changed the torch's battereis before continuing with her course! If only she had done what I saw one of the other competitors do and go out with a torch in each hand!
Meanwhile, I was discovering that alongside the navigational challenges there is the extra problem that if your headtorch is not particularly bright you can't see the ground that well (I think it's running out of battery a bit but that is a problem for the future!). There was a low fence at the top of a steep bank which I wanted to jump over. I spotted a section that was even lower to the ground as it was missing the top slat and leapt over it only to discover the missing plank half buried in the grass below!
At the start beforehand, Geo Chicken was making sure to warn everyone of a BIG hole that had been dug in garden part of the Crichton, although it had tape around it. By the time I reached the area that the warning concerned I had completely forgotten about it and was running along when suddenly a tape appeared out of the darkness right in front of me and I had to come to a quick stop! The hole on the other side of the tape was indeed very deep (I couldn't see the whole extent of it with the light from my headtorch!) and I imagine that if I had fallen in it it would have been quite difficult to get out.
There were some people around that weren't orienteers, although they were mainly in certain areas. There was one man driving around the more built up sections in a van who we presume was a security guard that was gradually becoming increasingly confused at the numbers of people running about in the dark. Luckily most competitors were wearing high vis jackets so no one became a pancake! I even mistook one of the other competitors for a car at one point and had to explain to them why I threw myself up the slope by the edge of the road in a panic!
When I finished I enncounntered the final challenge of the day - finding the car in the car park! My mum and I wandered over to what we were sure was the right car and were very confused when we couldn't get in, only to discover that it was Geo Chicken's car (which doesn't even look ANYTHING like ours) and that the one we were looking for was a couple spaces over!



Silvercraig Wood
10th October 2020

This event was planned by some of the club juniors but I helped in putting out some of the controls. I've visited this wood a couple times before but have never orienteered there amd the scale of the map is not one I am at all used to so putting out controls was a little tricky! An added distraction was that the wood is stuffed full of red squirrels. One of the other people at the event saw about five or six all in the same place and I had an awkward stand off with one when it decided to cross a path without looking first!
There is also a very healthy harvestman population (the invertebrate rather than the profession!). I was talking to the Headless Chicky by the finish when I realised there was a massive harvestman in her hair! I pointed at it and said something like "Oh no! Look!" but she thought I was pointing past her. I then had to explain that she had a beastie in her hair and then remove it and was just comiserating with her about the experience when I looked down and there was another harvestman on my arm!
I wasn't the only person who encountered problems of a navigational kind - on my course the first leg was quite long, at an angle from the start and required crossing a fence so people were picking up their maps and running off in all kinds of directions! I watched this and was very confused so when I started I just turned round and round a few times before leaving the start.
After having such a long halt in orienteering everyone is a little rusty but today on my run today I had what has got to be one of the silliest problems ever! I could not find one of the very controls I had put out the day before despite approaching from the same direction! I spent almost 20 minutes convinced that I had found the right pit but the control wasn't there and as I had put more of the controls out in the same area I then became convinced that I must have put everything in the wrong places and that subsequently I had ruined the entire event, the world was going to end, the control kites would rise against us and so on... I then relocated off a wall corner and realised I had been too low down the hill the whole time. The two pits didn't even look particularly similar! I feel that my navigation was just a little off for most of my run. I've been helping with some coaching recently and clearly I have accidentally given away my ability to orientate the map!



September

Barhill Plantation
5th September 2020

The Headless Chicken helped a lot with this event - first with checking the control sites to see if they were useable (we even found a whole crag that had somehow previously gone unnoticed! It wasn't even particularly far from the path!!). I also put out a number of the controls which I don't have much experience with and discovered it can be rather challenging. It is one thing to find a nice bright orange kite on a feature but when you need to make sure it's on the right one its a bit trickier! I actually put one of the controls in the wrong place and only realised when I was halfway to the next control site when I realised it was wrong so I had to go back and get it and then go to the correct feature. Things became even more exciting when on the way to the real control site I came across a dog in the bracken and we had a looooong stand off. The dog appeared to be unaccompanied and not particularly friendly but eventually it got bored and left. I also found a rather snazzy-looking parasitic wasp, which I have identified as Rhyssa Persuasoria. Despite how ominous it looks it is actually harmless (to humans - if you are a bug larvae in a pine tree this is your worst nightmare!).

On the morning of the event I put out the remaining controls and I saw not one but two red squirrels! I took a photo of one of them but as you can see it was a little too far for my phone to handle! However, this was not the last squirrel that day - one ran across the path near the finish while I was helping out and then I saw another while out on my course. The last squirrel was so unfazed that it stopped to watch me while on the ground and had a good scratch. I don't think I've seen so many squirrels in one day before!

When I was in the finishing stages of my run it began to rain and by the time I returned it was becoming rather heavy. When I reached the finish there was what at a glance I identified as an abandoned coat hung on a branch but then when I got closer I discovered it was in fact the Headless Chicky crouching with her legs inside her coat to keep dry! She maintains she was doing her best gargoyle imitation. When I got to the car the rain began really pour (you can see a video here).



August

The Crichton
22nd August 2020

I think this may be the HC's longest hiatus yet! Save from a couple attempts at using MapRun I haven't orienteered since New Year's day. It was great getting to return today and it was possibly a very wise decision to hold the event in an open, contained area as just about everyone discovered just how rusty they had become! Luckily I still remembered how to navigate from my somewhat disastrous maprun outing in which not once but twice I visited controls in the wrong order! Even for a Headless Chicken such as myself it's a little embarrasing and you can see it below as maprun is so kind to record your route! In order to make the event as pandemic-proof as possible it was set up very differently from usual with pre-enter only and tapes at the start and finish to assist distancing. It was actually a lot simpler than a normal local event as entry on the day can be very hectic. At the end of the event when we were waiting for the last finishers the Headless Chicky vanished! The HC was not overly concerned as she just thought she was in the car but then something moved in a tree and there she was some 2-3 metres from the ground! What does she think she is, a treecreeper??!



January

Mawbray Dunes
1st January 2020

Now you may be surprised to discover that I still exist (I missed the Scottish 6 days!!! Oh no, can it be?!) but the HC had a very busy 2019! However I made sure to attend the almost traditional Mawbray Dunes event even though I was at a New year's ceilidh the night before (earlier that day???) and was a little jiggered. The HC hadn't orienteered for a long time - except from bringing in some controls for the Pits 'n' bumps event in December last year, which the HC made a bit of a mess of! I only realised when I was in the vicinity of the first control I needed to collect that it was just a cane with no kite and I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time hunting it down. I even managed to run into one of our neighbours in the process who assumed I was looking for my parents and (very helpfully) tried to tell me where he'd seen them only to watch bemusedly as I wandered off in the opposite direction!
To get back to today's event I was a little apprehensive about being so rusty but it was actually fine! It wasn't a score event, if you did the shorter course, although it still had a very original setup. There were red and blue circles on the map and you had to get a blue one and then three red ones and repeat this until you had 15 reds and then finish on a blue control (there were more controls than you needed to get because the long course was to get all of them!). I really like how it is a different thing almost every year and this year was especially good as it wasn't a score event! (The HC finds the time limits in score events a bit stressful!) Despite my trepidations about running around like the most headless poultry to ever hatch my navigation was actually pretty good, barring one conversation that went something like:
HCy: So where are we then?
HC:Riiiight... oh no.
HCy: YOU DON'T KNOW??
Luckily I managed to relocate not long after that but the Headless Chicky was v concerned! Apart from a counting error that almost led to us getting four more controls than we needed everything went very smoothly and when we got back we went to the cafe in the nearby garden centre/animal rescue centre. There was an owl called Plop in the animal centre, which is really the only acceptable name to call an owl! There's a photo of Plop below, although unfortunately it's rather blurry as I took it as we were going.
A Chickeny relation that shall not be named decided to obey the letter of the rules rather than the spirit as it said nowhere that you couldn't visit controls multiple times and have them count more than once. Let's just say it didn't work so well for them...
On the way back I was listening to an audiobook (of the Hobbit) and at some point I fell asleep and woke up to realise I was an hour? on in the story and I have no idea when exactly I dropped off but I think it was about when Bombur fell into the enchanted river and wouldn't wake up again so irony I guess?




2019

March

CompassSport Cup Heat: Bampton Common
17th March 2019

I did my first ever blue today so I'm pretty knackered right now! I did the blue only because there weren't enough people from Solway to do blue and my Dad entered me for it without me fully realising! There was snow on the hills again, although not anywhere near as much as last weekend. One of my friends from university is staying with us for a couple days so he came along too (although he went for a walk up the hill rather than doing any orienteering). There was a fairly strict no whistle (and waterproof), no run policy today and when my friend set off on his walk he was mistaken for an orienteer and asked to display his whistle! I was waiting in the queue for the portaloos so all I could do was laugh.
The first few controls went by fairly smoothly but then there was a leg that went alllllllllll the way across the upper section of the map! There was a stream I had to cross to get to another stream but it was such a long way that when I reached the first stream I was worried that maybe I had missed the first stream entirely and that if I continued I would go off the edge of the map! Luckily I decided to continue past the first stream and I found the control on the second stream. This leg of the course took me past the part of the hillside that was still fairly well covered in snow (although I didn't get to go in it, sadly).
The rest of the course was all fairly downhill and there were a few others obviously on the same course that were going at around the same pace as me. Unfortunately I then decided to take a different route that I thought was more direct but actually took me down a very steep slope (it appears I still have not learned my lesson from New Lanark!!) and while I was busy negotiating the slippery slope everyone else disappeared off into the distance. By the time I had emerged on the other side there was not a person in sight! (Not even any of the sheep that were obviously around, judging by the pieces of wool, bones and other evidence).
I then continued on and eventually reached the last two controls. At this point I was a bit wiped out so what should have been two of the easiest controls on the course became a bit of a mess! They were both on groups of boulders and the boulders in this area were fairly pale and around the size of a sheep. Normally this would not present a problem but there were also a fair number of sheep grazing in the area. At the time I did not realise this so I got to the approximate area the control was in and thought 'Hmm, there's a lot more boulders here than I thought there would be!' I then wandered around a bit before realising that some of the 'boulders' were not quite what I thought they were when they moved!!

Hello! It's future Headless Chicken here!! I thought I'd finished this entry but it appears I was mistaken! This was a good 5 months ago so I don't really remember what happened particularly well. Luckily I was mostly finished before I forgot about it. I even wrote myself some notes but I am struggling to make any sense of them. I am currently scratching my head wondering what on earth 'tiddlers' is supposed to mean. Oh well I guess it shall remain a mystery!!

Tinto Twin Day event: Carmichael Estate
10th March 2019

The HC is back for a wee bit once more! I'm only going to two events this break because I have my finals this term and I really need to revise but it was nice to get out for a bit. However it was uh... interesting weather to go orienteering.

The snow was a couple inches deep in places but was fairly variable because it was also windy so it had been swept off certain areas and built up elsewhere. It was very very cold and there were occasional flurries of snow/sleet. Unfortunately I had come up from uni on the train just the day before so not only am I still accustomed to the tropical weather down south, but I underestimated how cold it would be and left some of my warmer clothing behind!
I was on a longer course than everyone else in my family so I set off first.
Early on in the course I ended up on the hilly area of the map and the wind and flurries of snow started to cause parts of my map to fade or disintegrate, which wasn't ideal! The second control was the longest leg of the course and it took me a long time because once I got to the right area (a rather steep hillside with not many features) I couldn't find the control and ended up backtracking a fair distance. The hillside was quite hard to run across because of the high contrast between the snow and the grass/heather/stone poking out and it also made spotting controls difficult - I should have brought my sunglasses!
After eventually finding the control I had to go all the way up the biggest hill and there was a weird narrow strip of hillside that didn't have any snow on it. Everyone before me had obviously gone along this route because the other sets of footprints all joined it but why was there no snow there in the first place? I suppose some mysteries will forever remain unsolved!
I then had to head downhill to the section of the map that had been partially rubbed off earlier. This made navigation a little challenging but I found the control by navigating to the centre of the partially faded circle so it was all fine!
After that the course entered a forested area next to some fields and at one point I had to go round a corner of a field when I came across a gate. The field wasn't marked as out of bounds so I decided to climb the gate and cut across the corner. However when I tried to lift myself up the gate was so wet and slippery that my foot just slid along the bar until I had to catch myself against the gate!
There were a lot of interesting structures on the course today - there was a spiky thing on top of a hill and a small ruin near the start. Also there was a semi-abandoned looking farmhouse that when I ran past there were the sounds of dogs barking. The creepiest building was definitely this ruined house in the later stages of the course. I was a bit lost in a forested section and emerged from the trees to see the remains of a house - only the walls remained and the snow was blowing everywhere so it looked very eerie!
When I finished today there was some confusion about what course I was supposed to be running as when I reached download I was asked if I'd retired. I was rather taken aback at this and told them which course I had done and I somehow ended up on the results in a category all on my own!!



January

Barhill Plantation: Pits n' bumps
5th January 2019

Looking back over the years I've been the Headless Chicken, it seems that this particular event (which is supposed to be held in December) seems to get postponed because of extreme weather every second year! Last year it was called off again due to forecasted heavy snow and strong winds (which never really happened - although there was some heavy rain - but the event was already postponed by then!). So today was attempt two and went much better. It was fairly cold but nothing remarkable for early January!
Despite the cold, a fair number of people turned up and the HCy and I were helping out so we were the last starters! It was the same set up as last year with bonus controls being in blanked out sections of the map, only this year the controls containing the map sections for finding the bonus controls was marked on the map. Apparently one of the bonus controls even had a map section for an extra bonus (bonus bonus?) control!
Unfortunately one of the blanked out sections of the map was one of the areas that the HC and HCy normally visit because it has a high density of controls so we had to be a bit more creative in our plans. Our run didn't get off to a very good start: halfway to the start I realised that we didn't have a control punchcard when Geo Chicken ran past with his. So I said to the HCy "Ah! we don't have the thing!! We need to go back!" So we ran back and the HCy took a shortcut over the wall so I waited for her. She came back, proudly showing me her dibber, which she thought was "the thing." I hadn't realised we didn't have the dibber in the first place so I was confused and had to clarify that I was talking about the punchcard so she had to go back again! Now that we had all our gear we went to the start and headed off. However, I realised shortly after we started that I had forgotten to start my watch so we didn't know exactly how long we'd been out!
Despite our initial difficulties, the actual orienteering went pretty well and we even found a bonus control (although not the one we were looking for!). We cut the timing close looking for said bonus control and had to sprint back to the finish! (It turned out we made it by half a minute!! and we beat lots of people! Hahaha!!)
And on that note I'm about to disappear off to uni for a couple of months!

Mawbray Dunes
1st January 2019

What better way to start the year than an orienteering event?! While we haven't made it to many orienteering events this holiday season we did make it to this event! When we got there we were in for a surprise: we were walking out of the car park when there was a loud bang behind us!! It turned out there was a rather large, aggressive sheep that was head butting the gate every time someone walked past. This was funny until part of the gate broke and it stuck it's head through. Here's a photo of the sheep itself:
Normally this event is pretty chilly but today it was positively summery! I even went out without a coat!! At the start there was one poor orienteer who tried to punch the start box only to find their dibber was dibbless!! In other words the chip required to register which controls you've been to had fallen out! Eek!! The Headless Chicky wanted company so we went round together (once again!). The last couple years this event has been a score event where the controls have to be punched in triangles but this year it was a conventional course! - well almost: there was a short and a long but the long was to go round the short and then do the course again but without the map!! (I have only found this out just now - it was supposed to be a surprise - so I think the HCy and I got lucky there!) We decided to only go round the short because I was pretty tired already (I was at a ceilidh on New Years and I slept in the car for most of the way to the event!).
The course itself went fairly smoothly, although the kites were very small and flat so they were difficult to spot. My Dad said he found one control and someone had been standing next to it but hadn't spotted it because of an unfortunately placed grass tussock. Apparently they weren't too chuffed by this realisation!
Every time we come to Mawbray dunes the Headless Chicky spends a lot of time falling over. Today she made quite a fuss about how she was going to be fine and that I'd be falling over instead (and she was right that I did fall over first but after that she was tripping all over the place!). At one point she tripped over a pothole and she ended up lying down in the heather with her bottom stuck in the pothole! Only almost getting run over by a speedy orienteer convinced her to move!
When we finished we visited the cafe/garden centre/animal sanctuary. We got to meet some nice cats (the HCy is making friends with one in the first photo) and there was a MASSIVE rabbit (If this rabbit sat on you, you might not survive! And if you did you certainly wouldn't forget it!!). Words cannot effectively describe the size of this rabbit but I have seen boulders marked on some orienteering maps that were the same size as that rabbit (admitedly in not very rocky areas).
There was also a structure out the back with various animals in it so here is a bird montage!
After looking at the animals we had some hot drinks to warm up... they were fancier than expected!




2018


I think this is a new record for me in terms of the longest I've gone without orienteering! Its been about 4 months, however in that time I have been in Brazil and started my 3rd year of university (which has been extremely full on). I was in SP for 7 weeks on a summer internship at Instituto Butantan (A research institute that studies mainly venoms and diseases). It was really interesting - the lab I was in was doing work on spider venom - and those of you that have seen my facebook page will know that while there wasn't any orienteering I still got up to lots of things!
I'd never been to the southern hemisphere before so it was a bit of a shock to go straight from summer to winter (even if winter there meant some days were over 30 degrees celsius!!). Everyone was in their winter woolies and I was sweating in a T-shirt!
I spent all my weekends exploring various parks and forests around the city and coming across animals I never expected to see outside of a zoo (for example: armadillos, fireflies, terrapins and all kinds of strange birds!) I visited an island several hours drive from Sao Paulo with some of the other interns and went swimming with tropical fish! One of the others was sunbathing and this HUGE black bee landed on her!!

I also saw frigate birds (although I didn't know it at the time as it is not a bird I ever expected to see outside of a nature documentary!). The HC had a whale of a time (I took many, many photos!) and the other interns were somewhat bemused! When the HC was younger she wanted to go to the Amazon one day and while this was actually Atlantic Forest it was like living the dream!
However, not everything was sunshine and rainbows... The building I was working in was supposedly haunted (it was one of the oldest parts of the Institute). I was quite happy to dismiss what people said as a good story but some weird stuff did happen (MOST of which can be explained). Weird thing 1. was purely my fault but makes a good story so buckle up, this takes some explaining to make sense. In Brazil it is common for doors that are electronically locked to be opened by flicking a switch on the exit side, and when you do this the lock makes a fairly loud clicking/rattling noise to let you know it has disengaged. Now I stayed late most nights on my own because the Institute was paying for my food as long as I ate in the canteen and dinner in the canteen started at 6.40 but work typically stopped somewhere between 5 and 6. So I'd been there about a week and I'm all alone in the office when I decide I need to visit the loo. However the loo is located downstairs in the creepy basement where the labs are. I make my way downstairs and discover the lights in the area the toilets were in are off so I see a switch and turn it on. EXCEPT it wasn't the light switch - there was a fire exit nearby and the switch unlocked it so I'm standing there in the dark, the lights haven't turned on AND there is a sudden loud rattling noise. I may have jumped a little! Anyway, moving on to weird thing 2. which is the one that is the most difficult to explain. I was in the office again, on my own - the only people still in the building are in the creepy basement - but I can hear footsteps behind me in the other half of the lab. They sounded distinctly like my supervisor's wife - who frequently wears ridiculously high heels - but she went home an hour ago and when I check I'm the only person upstairs. So I get a bit unnerved by this and decide to leave early but then strange thing 3. happened: I pack up and turn off ALL the lights, close the door ect and leave. However, when I got outside I looked back and all the lights were back on! At this point I'm pretty freaked out but my supervisor had made it clear the last person to leave had to turn the lights off so I head back in, steeling myself to face whatever had turned the lights back on! (I think we can now safely say that in a horror film I would have the role of "the one that dies first"). Fortunately for me (and for the continuation of the blog!) it turned out that one of the people from the neighbouring lab had come upstairs and switched all of the lights on in both her office and ours. Phew!
The photo below is of the building - taken on a non-haunted day!

Towards the end of my internship I even got a tour of the Dengue fever vaccine production facility that was going to be opening soon. A couple of years ago I read the Andromeda Strain, which is about a team of scientists trying to find a cure for a mystery pathogen from the upper atmosphere and that was all I could think of when they were showing us how they make sure the Dengue is kept in the facility (and isn't infecting people!).
When I flew back the cheapest way was to stop over in Germany so I ended up staying with one of my friends for a couple of days. He showed me some of the typical sites of the region: old castles, dramatic rock formations and some CAVES.

The caves were actually an old sand mine and you could walk around the upper levels. It was all pretty interesting - there were fossilised lizard footprints on the ceiling in places! Although this wasn't all that was on the ceiling: my friend and I went into one of the lower, darker areas and then realised we couldn't make out much so turned on our phone flashlights to come face to face with some MASSIVE cave spiders and a centipede!! Needless to say we high-tailed it out of there!



August

Askham Fell
2nd August 2018

The HCy's wee friend has now returned back home after her adventure!
In complete contrast to Angle Tarn Pikes, the area was pretty flat with lots of pits and it was really sunny! I'd come prepared for cold conditions so was overheating a bit by the time I reached the start. There was some confusion when I started as when I went to pick up my map someone else in the same minute had already picked the map for my course so I was slightly rattled!
The first few controls went relatively smoothly - I even saw a hare!! I also spotted one of the sinkholes we'd been warned about and it had bones in it!!! (Of the non-human variety though)
However when I came to the longest leg of the course things went downhill (not literally though). There were two map sizes today and I had the smaller one so this control was rather close to the edge of the map. This shouldn't have been a problem but I had to fix my shoe laces and then proceeded to head off in the wrong direction, off the map! I probably should have realised I was leaving the beaten track by the number of grouse I was startling but it took a loooooong walk though a marsh that defintely wasn't on the map for me to realise. After guddling around for almost 40 minutes (!) I eventually found the control. The rest of the course went fairly smoothly (for me; I heard the Headless Chicky had a FUN time in the gorse right at the end).
It was so sunny today that in the 90ish minutes I was out I got awful sunburn - with stripes of unburnt skin on my arms where my control description holder and dibber string were. It looked really odd!!



July

Angle Tarn Pikes
31st July 2018

Well the Headless Chicky is back from Scout camp now and she brought back one of the American scouts. They were scheduled to go home the day after this event so they came along today! They'd never gone orienteering before so this was a pretty extreme start! The weather was not very pleasant and there was a 2.4km walk to the start that was allll up hill! The path up was being worked on and there were huge bags of stones in the middle of the path. I have no idea how they got up there! I took the photo below but I wasn't even at the top of the hill!! (Everyone is going down the hill now because part of the route to the start was the same as the route back from the finish)

I was off first again and I got up there with only a couple minutes to spare! The area today had a great view (despite the weather) and I'm really sad that I didn't take my camera round the course. However the hillyness that made the area so beautiful also made it difficult to get across the ground so I plodded round most of the course.
I saw a funny looking catterpillar today, I was minding my own buisness when I looked down to find a black catterpillar with yellow stripes along it next to my foot!
After that things began to get interesting. I was running over a bit of marshy land when a person running parallel to me just suddenly nosedived! I stopped to see if he was alright as he wasn't moving but he just had a sudden case of cramp. At this point I was beginning to run low on brainpower so every control took far longer than it should have! The map didn't have vegetation marked on it so I was having issues recognising which marshy bit was which. I got so confused that my Dad, who was on the same course and started about half an hour later, managed to overtake me without realising. I eventually got to the penultimate control but hit the latest obstacle in my path - a bunch of lost preteens that were all looking for the same control. Once they'd been helped and I finished I had to make my way back down the hill!! I walked down with my dad and he was talking to someone who had had a FUN time finding the first control which wasn't helped by the fact they'd picked up the wrong control descriptions! They had some colourful things to say about it!!
We got back to the car to find Mother Cluck was back but not the HCy or her friend, which was concerning as they were only doing an orange so I got changed and headed back up the hill bearing biscuits and water. Going back up was rather tricky because I was no longer wearing my o shoes so I had a lot less grip and I was the only person on the path going uphill so I had to dodge out of the way every 5 meters or so. I was most of the way up when I came across them and then we had to go back down! Needless to say I was knackered by the end but at least I got some good photos (as seen below!)


Grangemouth
22nd July 2018

The Headless Chicky wasn't with us today because we were on the way back from visiting her at scout camp.
I was running the women's open today (it was only 3km long because it was urban). However this was a world ranking event so I turned up just in time for my start to see all these national teams warming up! When I went to clear my dibber one of the elites did at the same time - their's immediately went "beepbeepbeep" while mine was silent for a good 10 seconds longer before beeping belatedly "beeeep....beeeep....beeeep" The fact that even the noise was slower had me in a fit of the giggles before I'd even stepped into the start box!
In the first start box there was a sign with the various hazards to avoid, it had the usual things but also washing lines! I read this and thought this sounded ridiculous, however I had to eat my words around 5 controls in. There was a narrow strip of grass with people's washing lines across it. On the way to the control I didn't really notice the washing lines because I went along the fence where there weren't any but when I went back there were lots of other people running all over the place so I ran further from the edge and almost recieved a washing line to the face! Whoops!!
I was running the same course as the elites today and at the same time so I spent a lot of time dodging fast moving orienteers in narrow passageways! I was so preoccupied by not getting run over I managed to do the course in under half an hour!!! (I still came last though) and was confused to find my parents had yet to start!!
The photos below are of: 1. The HCy in front of the resident octopus at scout camp, 2. The HC's subtle choice in clothing dump (guess which pile is mine!!) and 3. A kite that was flying at the start that looks a bit like a red kite (although I suspect it's supposed to be a buzzard) so I shall now name it the kite kite!



Rickerby Park
07th July 2018

Wow! It's still hot!! This is definitely the hottest summer I've experienced for quite some time! Luckily there was a nice breeze though.
When we were getting ready today there almost was an incident-
WHAT DO YOU MEAN "INCIDENT" IT WAS AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT!!!
Oh hey Headless Chicky, it's been a while!
I have been BUSY... doing stuff.....
Stuff? Come on HCy, we want to know where you've been! I've had people asking after you!!
Hmm, in that case I have been off learning the skills I'll need for taking over the world! (Otherwise known as Duke of Edinburgh and Scout camps)
Anyway this "assassination attempt" was someone attempting to open the car door while the HCy was leaning against the other side. This happened a couple of times when the HCy was still a wee chick and it resulted in some spectacular backwards somersaults!!
*HCy leaves huffily*
Oh dear I don't think she's very happy, anyway today there weren't any gymnastics but it was a close thing and the Headless Chicky almost ended up headfirst on the tarmac again!
The HC almost did the orange today because there was an issue with the distances on the control descriptions so they were twice as long as the actual course - a 6km short green and a 12km green? I think not!!
I had a bit of a moment today when I picked up the map, the area was very open with patches of trees and cows and this was so unlike any of the other areas I've been to recently (not that there's many) that I ran off in the wrong direction!! There was a circle of standing stones in the direction I'd chosen and this only distracted me further: 1. I had it mixed up with the war memorial on the map and 2. Who wouldn't be distracted by some standing stones?? Anyway after that things went fairly to plan (except from being caught up by the Headless Chicky).
It was so warm today that a lot of the cows were lying down on the ground, presumably sunbathing? The HCy was concerned one of them was dead, it was lying so still but no sooner had she expressed this but it got up and looked right at us!
We eventually managed to overtake Mother Cluck but we went to the wrong tree (by a long way) when looking for the last control so she overtook us again and it was very close!!
Here's a photo of the HCy and I while out on the course:




June

Mabie Forest
28th June 2018

This was the last of the summer series events and things got off to a lively start with the Headless Chicky helping setting up the barbecue and getting covered in charcoal in the process. She then generously decided she wanted to share the charcoal dust and went around trying to get high-fives from everyone. Most people saw through her ruse and managed to dodge but I wasn't given an option and did my course with a great big splodge of charcoal dust on my arm (I got my own back through and the HCy went round with charcoal smeared across her face!). Borderline Chicken wasn't so lucky and did give the HCy a high-five not realising she had an ulterior motive!
We all went round the orange today because it was VERY hot and none of us thought we would manage a green. The HCy caught me up before I reached the first control (which was a fair distance away!) and we ended up meandering around together. Unfortunately we were so busy talking that we took a wrong turn and ended up WAY too high and with a virtually impenetrable section of forest crawl in the way! This resulted in a lengthy scramble to reach the path we intended to take downhill.
When we finished we had some of the barbecued food and the HC managed to become engaged in a water fight with Indiana Chicken. It all started with Indiana Chicken sneaking up behind the Headless Chicky and pouring water next to her and it escalated from there. The HC decided it would be safest to just watch from a distance.

Corncockle Plantation and Spedlins Flow
20th June 2018

The HC is now home for the holidays! Time really does fly! When we arrived at the event today there was a slight incident where Chicken Pi managed to set off another orienteer's car alarm!! She went to talk to someone in the car (which had been locked despite it still being occupied) and the attempt to open the door set off the alarm. The HC was busy putting her gaiters on at the time so the first she knew of this was the alarm going off, closely followed by Chicken Pi yelling "It wasn't me!!!"
The Headless Chicken was a bit rusty today and in a moment of madness I decided to do the green so there was much haring around through areas of thick vegetation I probably should have avoided! I also for the first time ventured into Spedlins Flow which is just across the road from Corncockle but is like a completely different area! There are very few, faint paths and is is rather marshy whereas Corncockle is mostly pretty dry and has well defined tracks. I was thrown by the change in scenery but I eventually found everything!



April

British University orienteering Championships:
Relay - Shotover Country Park
28th April 2018

This is the only event the HC went to this term as it was all pretty full on! I don't have much to say about the event either because I had to retire (the HC had been feeling poorly and over-estimated her abilities) which was pretty awkward! This event was actually supposed to be held in February but was postponed because of the snow! (You can see a photo of the snow a few entries back)

Miffy hunting! (Nagasaki, Dejima Area)
1st April 2018
During the Easter holidays my family and I went on a holiday to Japan! We didn't plan to do any orienteering but on our first day in Nagasaki we came across some!

We were next to the artificial island of Dejima which was where the Dutch used to trade from when Japan was closed off from the world.
It was more of a treasure hunt than an orienteering course really but we spent quite some time looking for all 9 miffys! We eventually found 7 but it was very challenging because they were all small (some only the size of a £2 coin!) and were in all sorts of strange places like the underside of a metal handrail! The first photo below is of us on the hunt - as you can see there weren't many features! The other photo is after we gave up on the last two rabbits and went to check out the Nagasaki Chinatown.





March

Dalbeattie Town Wood
24th March 2018

It was very nice to actually orienteer (though it's been so long that today I was living up to my name a bit too well). I was so chuffed to be in the forest I went to the first few controls by the direct line! I then remembered what forest I was in and that taking the direct route is maybe not a good idea (though that wasn't going to stop me trying!!)
Early on in the course we were taken close to the loch where there is The Marsh. Every time the HC goes in there it ends badly with a very muddy chicken. I actually managed to get through The Marsh without incident! However I was too busy being pleased that I fell in a different, previously un-encountered marsh nearby! The HC sank to above her knees before she managed to halt her progress towards the Earth's core by lying on the top of the marsh - and that was my first time wearing my new o top, too!
There isn't much else to say about this event, other than the weather was really nice and that LOADS of people turned up! We had to recyle maps and the results string was completely full!

Dumfries and Galloway School's Championships:
Cream O'Galloway
16th March 2018

Well I was helping at this event rather than taking part but my job was helping lost competitors so it kinda counts?? The HC was stationed near the furthest point, near a loch. Last year I had the same job but I was in an area where only the orange and light green courses went, this year ALL the courses went past me! It was very interesting seeing the whole.. range in map reading on display. There were some right Headless Chickens out there! There were some poor souls I saw several times but generally they seemed to be doing OK?
When most people were back we did a sweep of the area to find any stragglers. I didn't find any, but I DID find a huge frog!! (see the photo below) It was a very nice frog and I was telling the planner about it when he said "oh you could have eaten that, some nice frog's legs.." The HC was very indignant (but the planner didn't seem too sold on frogs legs for lunch so the HC let him live to plan another day!)
The HCy did VERY well today and won a trophy!! The Headless Chcicken is very proud!
Afterwards, when all the competitors had gone, all the volunteers collapsed in a heap in the cafe and the HC saw the cool owl on the wall (in the second photo)!



February

BUCS (British University Orienteering Championships):
Oxford
24th - 25th February 2018

Unfortunately the event was cancelled due to the levels of snow. Ah well, maybe next time!
By the way the photo is of the view out of my front door at uni, an area known by the students as Narnia - due to the lamp posts. This name seemed especially appropriate in the snow, though there seems to be a shortage of Fauns!

Brill Common
10th February 2018

I went back to Brill but it was very different from last time! The weather was pretty awful, although I didn't mind this at all because last time the ground was rock hard but there was so much rain today it was rather muddy! The HC was quite pleased about the mud but very unpleased that she'd forgotten her waterproofs! (In my defense it wasn't raining when I left my room!!)
Anyway, when we got to the event everything was going smoothly until I discovered that a particular timing system was being used at the event (I shall not name names but we all know which one). I was so horrified by this news I may? have ... er had a slight tantrum??? Yep the HC is definately acting her age!?!
Once I accepted I wouldn't be able to use my dibber and started things were a lot more fun! There was quite a lot of livestock around, although it wasn't initially obvious! There were goats in fenced-off, out of bounds areas and sheep were all over the place in the finishing stages of the course. The real surprise, though, came around halfway through the course when I ran round a bush and turned round to find a cow RIGHT THERE, in the bush, just looking at me! I was so startled by the stealth cow encounter that when I was running up to the next control I lost my balance and catapulted myself onto the ground right in front of the kite! I just about did the splits!! (I don't recommend it, ouch!)



January

Mabie Forest Knoll Bagging
2nd January 2018

Well guess what! Another score event!! Today I not only went round with the Headless Chicky but also Drama Chicky and a new orienteer who shall be given the name Bob to make this easier to write. (I was the designated mother hen)
It was very rainy today - I was wearing two pairs of trousers AND a pair of shorts and I still got soaked through! Normally it's just cold or even a couple of times snowy but there haven't been many rainy knoll baggings. Also the walk to the start was EVEN LONGER than normal. However, despite this it was a pretty good knoll bagging course-wise.
We ended up going really far out as we decided to get one of the larger groups of controls and there were four more not that far away and before we knew it we were at the edge of the forest - this was a shocking experience for me as I've never seen that particular edge before and part of me had decided that Mabie forest was endless!
We then realised we were rather far out and started to head back, getting controls on the way. We were cutting things a bit fine so went faster, unfortunately Bob, who was rather quick, managed to get so far ahead that when he went past the path we were planning on going down we couldn't call him back! This meant we had to take a different route back. The HCy fell over in a stream and cut her hand - her first proper battle wound!
We all did get back in time, with a few minutes spare! (Seeing as the last time I orienteered with Drama Chicky we were 10 minutes late this was a nice improvement!). The HCy and I managed to miss the prize giving because we were too cold and went to get changed but apparently we came 1st in our category (just). I think I'm going to have to resign as Headless Chicken if I continue like this seeing as yesterday we came 8th out of around 50! *HC looks worried*
On another note, my Mum found a lost loaf of bread today in the middle of the forest, just lying on the ground!! (and she left it there too) Here's a photo as proof:


Mawbray Dunes
1st January 2018

So once again I spent new years day orienteering! It was rather windy today which we discovered on the way there when the road went right by the edge of the sea and the spray covered us!!
The event was yet another score but it was also a bit like a treasure hunt. There were 25 controls all on the north side of bushes or trees and we had an hour. Unfortunately there were far more than 25 bushes/trees in the area and some were pretty small but still marked on the map. This meant the best strategy was to go everywhere systematically (which is what the HCy and I did). We actually spent surprisingly little time picking ourselves up off the ground this year (Mawbray Dunes has a healthy rabbit population, judging by the number of burrows!) Although the HCy did her best to disappear down a couple of holes..
Nothing much really happened today except when we got tired we got into some DEEP discussions *HC strokes chin and tries to look knowledgable* (Do chickens have chins? Maybe??).
When we got back I bumped into the newly-named Zippy Chicken! It sounded like she had decided to go after my title as she had forgotten to start the timer on her watch and only realised after she'd been out who knows how long! We then went to the cafe/garden centre next to the area and they had an orienteer's menu! (Does this mean the food contains orienteers or that it's for orienteers?!!).




2017

December

Binsey
30th December 2017

It snowed again yesterday! (but then rained so it was all gone - although there were small, slushy patches everywhere on the hill. The bigger hills lurking in the distance looked rather more ominous as they all had a covering of snow and low, very grey clouds.

The HC went round with the HCy (surprise surprise! *HC rolls eyes*) because neither of us were feeling particularly energetic. It was rather windy today (and cold *HC fluffs feathers*) so we mostly walked. As we battled through the wind the HC decided now was the time for a quick lesson in Japanese grammar, much to the HCy's disapproval! The lesson was cut short by the discovery that there was a very healthy mouse population. A few years back (when this event was still at the next door Whittas Park) the HCy and I found a hibernating mouse and had to move it somewhere a bit less exposed. This time round the mice were very much awake! They kept on zipping away from us through wee tunnels in the grass. Between the two of us we saw a LOT of mice - I completely lost count but probably somewhere between 10 - 20!
We ended up cutting it rather fine getting back due to me getting rather tired and the HCy having to wait for me (how embarrassing, normally the boot is on the other foot!). We then spent a while trying to find two controls we had gone past on the way out (by the way it was a score event, don't worry!), which were proving elusive because we were wayyyyy too far up the hill. Oops. When we found the controls we looked round to see our Dad heading off AWAY from the finish. This seems like a bit of a high risk strategy because he started before we did and we only had 4 minutes to get back! The HCy and I had to run allll the way down the hill to finish on time, but we made it. *phew* Our Dad, however was ONE SECOND late!! He didn't have a good run at all seeing as he came back with his compass like this:
In this photo you can just see the HCy and HC as we were running down the hill to the finish.

Barhill Plantation: Pits n' Bumps
9th December 2017

It was a bit chilly today as it snowed a bit yesterday and the snow is still around! (Snow?? In December!!?!) Anyway, my dad was planning again so I ended up helping with registration. It was veeeeeeeery cold, as in sub zero temperatures) but lots of people turned up anyway!
One of the club members around my age (who doesn't have a chicken name) had brought a friend from uni. I made a comment about how she was doing a good job getting new people to come and she turned to me and said "I'm going to slowly indoctrinate him." This caught me off guard as its more something I would say *evil laugh* but I definitely approve!!
Eventually I got so cold I decided to have a run so I could warm up again! Getting ready was not a fun process as I had to take off all my fleeces and when I went to put on my o shoes I discovered they were still damp and had gone mouldy!! *HC wails!*
After grudgingly putting on my smelly shoes I headed up to the start and began my run as fast as I could! Once you got going it was actually surprisingly nice! The snow on the ground made it a bit difficult to see where you were putting your feet but it was actually quite fun, and if you didn't run you would probably become an ice block. *Brrrr* I first went to a large cluster of long course only controls which was in a section of the forest that's quite dark so there wasn't much snow on the ground. This made it much easier to find the canes. (There were 3 types of control today: the ones on both the long and short and then there were bonus controls which had kites. The controls which were only on the long course had no kites, just numbered canes. The bonus controls were only on the long course and there were map sections showing their locations attached to some of the canes so it was map memory! To complicate things the first two types of control had si boxes but the canes had the old school punches so everyone on the long course had to carry a dibber and a punchcard.) I went after one bonus control but I reckoned it took too much time to be worth going after the other ones.
I then went into some of the less thick parts of the area and I can now say with certainty that looking for a cane with a white tag on it in a snowy forest is strangely difficult... Out of the 5 or so controls I looked for I only found 1 and that was only out of pure stubbornness!
Next I got a lot of the short course controls before high tailing it back to the finish. It turned out that I got 19 controls on my punchcard and 19 on my dibber!This was pretty weird, especially seeing as the HCy also had 19 controls on her punchcard!
Today there were also bonus points up for grabs if you went round your course wearing a santa hat! The HC wore one (despite being a bit of a grinch) because she wanted the points but it was actually quite comfortable! Of course this opportunity triggered some debate about what counted - did it have to be a hat, or could it be a christmass-y hat in general, or did it have to be a hat at all?! There was some debate about whether christmas gloves counted and if a pair going round together both wore hats would they get double points? The best hat wasn't worn round the course but was produced in the car park afterwards. It looked like a fairly normal santa hat at first.. until it started dancing!! The HC is unsure what she thinks of this.
In other news the HC finished in the top 5 today!! WHAAAAT!??? And the HCy was in the top 10 as well, everyones' going to have to watch out now! Also the HC has temporarily become a ptarmigan.





October

Cambridge City race
28th October 2017

Hahaha... It's been a while! The Headless Chicken only went to one event this term as she's been pretty busy *sad chicken noises* However She still went to the city race which was in Cambridge this year. The HC was a bit apprehensive about the notoriously long bus journey but luckily some of the other orienteers at her uni also wanted to go so I got a lift.
The HC ended up doing a longer course than I would have liked because the one I was supposed to do was something like 7km but the HC decided this might not go so well so ran down a category (only 5.3km!). This caused some difficulties because I came with speedy people and we had to figure out how much to pay for parking and they're estimates were a bit on the jimp side! *Eek!!*
Quite a lot of the CUOC and Drongo members I met at the Varsity match last year were there, including Chem chicken who was actually the event Organiser!! Very snazzy!
Despite my course being a bit longer than I would have prefered it was very fun. I got to see parts of Cambridge I hadn't before - including several of the departments and a couple of the colleges! (unfortunately I'm not quite sure which because I was running (!) too much to see a lot of the signs. However I definately got to go through King's College which was fun - the tourists were a bit confused but didn't seem to mind the orienteers dashing all over the place.
I also had some controls in an area where there was a lot of the Natural Science lecture theatres which was interesting as at the University of Cambridge students have Saturday morning lectures. I was going through this area as lectures were ending so there were students everywhere! I got some funny looks from some of the students as they were obviously confused about why all these strangely dressed people kept on running past (and the occasional chicken!).
The rest of the Headless Chicken's run was fairly uneventful and I got back before the parking ran out! However, the others still had to go get something to eat so we had to walk all the way back to the centre to raid the shops and then hurry back to the car. We were late by at least 5 minutes but luck was on our side and the parking warden hadn't been round yet so we made our getaway!




September

The Crichton
23rd September 2017

Well the thing today was actually an activity for beginners but I ended up going round anyway with both the Headless Chicky and my friend from uni who is staying with us at the moment. There were a surprisingly large number of people that turned up - some from the recent college open day, others from beat the street (I don't know if anyone remembers but it came to Dalbeattie 2 years ago and is now in Dumfries). There were even some people that had come from previous beginners events we'd put on such as the maze at Castle Douglas civic days. It was great seeing so many people!! *HC fluffs her feathers proudly*
When we went round the HCy and I made my friend do all the navigating!! Seeing as this was her first time orienteering this was possibly a bit evil but we gave her plenty of help! When we got to the last control it was a race for the finish with my friend taking the lead and the HCy running fast enough that she could just keep ahead of me (grrrr). My friend was concentrating so much on running she went sailing past the finish and we had to yell after her as she quickly disappeared off into the distance!

High Pike
10th September 2017

Wow the holiday has gone so fast, it's almost time for me to go back to uni now!! *EEK* My dad was controlling the event today so we had to leave the house super early! The HC wasn't very amused by this but it meant we got to have early starts (which was good because the weather was slowly deteriorating.
The person in the car next to us had a dog and they asked that if it started raining while we were still there that we put the dog in the car boot. The HCy took this as her cue to play with the dog, which was VERY friendly. All I could hear was her wails as it licked her to death!! Unfortunately it then started to rain so the HCy then had to try and get the dog in the car. Getting it in went OK but then it wanted a tummy rub and was hanging over the edge precariously. The HCy then had to try and get it fully in the car.
Thinking about it the HCy was having quite a day today! When we getting ready she was trying to get my attention but called me her name instead of mine! (she succeeded in gaining my attention, just not in the way she wanted!)
When we were entering the event I had a momentary lapse in common sense and said I'd do the green, which turned out to be a bit of an adventure! Nothing too crazy happened but the weather conditions made everything a bit more interesting!! There was a strong wind (and High Pike is open hillside) and it rained a fair bit too! There were also lots of abandoned mineshafts all over the place, most of which were fenced off so there weren't many accidental caving opportunities. It was actually quite nice to just be out - despite the less than ideal weather! I almost got swept away once or twice!! *HC wails as she is blown away*
There were lots of wee mousy things in the grass that moved so fast that all you saw was a grey blur and I also saw some HUGE caterpillars!
Apparently one of the club members had an unwanted follower on the course today and said club member managed to punch a control without their follower noticing until they got to the control after, at which point the follower huffed a bit and went back the way they'd come!




August

Scottish 6 days 2017 - Royal Deeside

I'm back once more to present to you yet another 6 days!! (is this really the 3rd one I've talked about here???)
This time we were staying here:
Or not... we were actually in the grounds of this castle, not in it! Anyway on with the story!!

Here's a photo of one of the aliens from the string course, this one is an o kite alien!!


The first photo is of the table (mentioned above) which decided it was going to become a herbivore and the other is of the view from the string course across to assembly, with the toilets and car park behind.


Today's photo is of the pale raspberries mentioned above. They are (despite appearances) ripe but taste slightly different from normal raspberries - I think I actually like them better!!



The first photo is of the rescue helicopter landing. The second is of a prank the HC pulled. The people staying in the cottage next to us are also orienteers and there was a birthday banner in the window today so I drew them a card and we sneakily put it through their letterbox before they came back! When they found it one of them laughed and looked right at where we were attempting to sneakily watch through the window!!


The HC came across the 6 days selfie frame today as you can see below!


The photos for today are of the big screen and the piper playing at the prize giving. Now here ends the HC's account of the scottish 6 days 2017!




July

Druridge Bay (Associated with the Yvette Baker Trophy)
2nd July 2017

This event was actually TWO events! With the casual event (for those not taking part in the Yvette Baker Trophy) before the real thing. The YBT is for English juniors so none of us could compete in the actual event. The area was by the sea with a narrow band of sand dunes by the beach and the rest of the area being sort of foresty fieldy stuff round a large loch... sorry, lake. The HC was feeling brave so did the green which was rather long!
Most of my course was in the sand dune area which was quite fun but it was very windy so when the HC ran along the path at the top edge of the dune/sand cliff thing above the beach it was a bit nerve wracking, especially seeing as the wind was blowing me towards the edge!
The sand dune area was VERY flowery (see the first photo below) I don't think I've ever seen so many geraniums in one place before!
Things went fairly smoothly except from a slightly startled terrier attacking the HC. The other two photos below are of the HCy finishing and the photo below that is of the HC crossing the stepping stones near the end. Some of the stepping stones were slightly wobbly so I was having a fun time getting across (as you can see here!).


June

Shambellie Woods
21st June 2017

The HC is back home now! *yay!* This was the only event in the summer series that the HC made it to (I even missed the Mabie barbecue!!) which felt odd. Also Indiana Chicken is back from his looong trip looking for treasure!
Today the HCy went round with me on the long course which was a score event where the controls were in groups of three that had to all be found before moving on to the next triangle. We only had 50 minutes and I hadn't orienteered for a month due to exams so it was a bit of an adventure! The HC had forgotten about how vegetation (bracken especially) grows up very rapidly in summer and some dodgy routechoices on my part led to us wading through head high bracken and jumping across wide ditches at the same time. Talk about multitasking!! This is why the direct route is generally not a good idea in summer!
Due to the amount of flailing around in the undergrowth that occurred we only found two triangles (6 controls out of like 15) before deciding to head back. The HC was on fine form today and had forgotten to start my stopwatch at the start so we only had a rough estimate of the time we'd taken. This meant we were somewhat concerned about getting back on time so we started running the loooooong way back to the finish. The HCy had the map at the time and when Indiana Chicken appeared and started egging us on (I'm so sorry that pun was completely unintentional!) she took off! The HCy is faster than me so I was having such a hard time keeping up that I didn't notice when we took a wrong turn. We only realised mistakes had been made when we reached the road at the edge of the area!! To get to the finish we had to go along the back of a walled off section - unfortunately we discovered halfway through that the path stopped and there was a sea of nettles in its place!! *chickeny death wails echo on the wind*
We eventually dragged ourselves to the finish and had the horrifying discovery that we were seconds over the time limit! NOOOOOOOOOO!! (Although, on the bright side, we actually did pretty well because most people got more controls but were even more late than us)

Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival: Drumpellier Country Park
2nd June 2017

This event was supposed to be at Lanark Racecourse but moved due to there being too many events wanting to use the same area at the same time.
When we got there we found several trees completely COVERED in Ermine moth caterpillars! (see the first photo below) There were several trees completely covered in caterpillars and the silky stuff they produce and there were even strings of caterpillar covered silk hanging down from the branches. There was an orienteer warming up near the trees who managed to run through the trees and a caterpillar string hit them in the face! Oh dear...
On the way back we stopped by Amazonia!!! The second photo below is of some Marmosets we saw (they didn't have any chickens unfortunately).


May

Orienteering Cuppers: University Parks
27th May 2017

All the sports clubs at my uni have cuppers events in the last term of the year which are competitions between the colleges. I was the only one from my college taking part so I knew the chances of my college doing well were nonexistent. The event didn't get off to the greatest of starts when the HC couldn't find the start! I knew the start was in one of the 4 corners, but which one? I eventually found the start in the last corner I looked (sorry).
The courses went round uni parks and also into the neighbouring science area which was interesting to orienteer in again now I know it a lot better. It was a very hot day so the HC was rapidly wilting and all the other competitors were overtaking meeee. Not fair!
The rest of the course passed without incident (except from a melting HC almost punching the start instead of the finish!)


Day 1 (Individuals): Gullane, Archerfield and Yellowcraig
20th May 2017
This event was the day after the urban at Tranent (look down if you haven't already seen it). I think I did quite well except for one part where I got soaked by some sudden rain. *grrr*
After we all finished, we found an empty frame that looked like it needed filling.. with chickens!!

Day 2 (Relays): Binning Wood
21st May 2017
Today I was an adult! (kind of) I was in a team with my parents so had to run as an adult which was stressful because The junior team's mass start was before the adult teams and I was running first leg so I thought I was in the wrong start!! *eek!*
I was doing a td5 course today (green standard, GREEEEEEEN!) and this scrambled my brains slightly. When I got to the finish area there were two finishes (one for the first and second leg runners that needed to handover and another for the final leg runners). The final leg runners' finish was blocked off by helpers standing with their arms stretched out and I was so tired I thought they wanted a hug and was very close to giving them one!!! Arrrrgh! THE EMBARASSMENT! *HCy goes off to sulk in the corner*
On the bright side though, I'm on the cover of score this issue! I'm famous!


Tranent Urban Sprint
19th May 2017

I had three days of orienteering in a row this long weekend, the first of which was Tranent urban event.
Today I saw quite a sight!! I was running into a control when the poor chicken in front of me tripped over an invisible dog lead and ended up in a feathery heap on the floor after the dog owner's warning came too late!
Not much else happened until I got to the way to the finish, which included going through one of two gates in a hedge, I approached from an angle and from where I was standing all I could see was people running up to a point in this hedge and seemingly walk through it, leap over or most worryingly, seeming to crawl through this hedge! In fact they were either opening the gate, jumping over the gate, or crawling through a gap in the gate.



Day 1 (long distance): High Dam
6th May 2017
Headless Chicky here, finally this blog is MINE! First this blog and then the world will fall under my domain. Mmmmmwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaaa ‘cough’ anyway contrary to what you might believe I may have been too shy to appear on the blog for a while, I’m sure that it happens to most people. However seeing as my sister is away, I felt I had to do SOMETHING!
In these past few months I have been quite the busy chicken! I even attended the British championships where there was a wedding near where we were parking, I only hope that we didn’t disturb the people inside with the loud speakers and such!
As for the orienteering…. ‘Sniff’ I don’t want to talk about that. (it didn't go very well, the end)

...Goodbye..


Chichester City Center
13th May 2017

Today I took a day off from studying and went to go see my Dad and Grandad for the day and then went to the event at Chichester. It was an evening event but was still rather warm. *HC melts slowly* The HC started in the same minute as her Dad and we both didn't get off to the best start: just by the start there was a pub with someone heckling the passing orienteers so in the heat of the moment we both ran of in completely the wrong direction! The HC reaqlised her mistake when she reached a large street she hadn't been expecting but there was no stopping my Dad!
Chichester turned out to be quite a nice area with lots of small parks and a very complicated library complex. Unfortunately all the couples in the area also seemed to approve so the HC kept on turning corners and being like *EWWWWW! MYYYY EYESSSS!!* (The HC is not the most mature of chickens so isn't very good at dealing with PDAs)
I eventually finished without anymore upsets and had to go back go catch my train back to uni.

Brill Common
9th May 2017

There was once an event at Brill,
Which (surprisingly) took place on a hill,
The field was for horses,
There were three courses,
And a huge wooden windmill.



March


The HC headed off to France for a week in her holidays with her universities' orienteering club to compete against our "rivals"! We had four days of training before the actual varsity match. Here's an account of how it went:


Here's a photo of the terrain on day 1, impressive, isn't it!!







This is what the castle looked like:






Below is a photo of the spectator control


Dumfries and Galloway School's Championships: Barhill Plantation
17th March 2017

Before anyone says anything, yes the HC is too old to compete at this event now. So today I was helping out instead. My job was to stand in a certain area and check people were OK. It was mostly very uneventful but there were a couple of rather headless chickens. There was one poor boy who went past me 4 times!! It got to the point where I was starting to question my sanity! Apart from that not much happened except in most of the photos I took I somehow managed to time it so that everyone looked like they'd been possessed! Oh well, at least I remembered to take photos! The HCy did well today - she came 2nd running as a S6 instead of a S2!
On another note, the HC is aware that she hasn't written anything for quite a while but she hasn't actually done any orienteering in the last term! However this shall soon be fixed as the HC has a lot going on orienteering-wise this holiday so fear not! Chicken out!!

January

Mabie Knoll Bagging
2nd January 2017

This is my last event before I go back to uni! *Eek!* So another year, another knoll bagging! After last year's disaster (what do you mean you're supposed to be back before the time limit??!), things went really well this year. I went round with the HCy again - there's no escape for me!!
There were a lot of people at the event this year - including my sister's friend's little brother's partner in crime. (Wow that was a mouthfull!) Said terror decided to walk up to the not-so- secret-start with us (if I told you where it was I'd have to kill you! *clacks beak menacingly*). He was quizzing us about all sorts of stuff - like what was the most risky thing we'd ever done - and all I could think of was the time we went orienteering at New Lanark. *HC pales* (My Mum told me not to go down this VEryyyy steep slope and I agreed with her wholeheartedly... Until I decided it would be a great shortcut, and got horribly stuck)
Anyway, past moments of stupidity aside, I managed to avoid the first dodgy decision I make at knoll bagging (aka the killer hill of doom next to the not-so-secret-start) but then fell back into my old ways when I spotted a shortcut. (me and shortcuts!!) We went down said shortcut which was fine except when it met the forest road there was a huge, very steep (and unstable) bank. The HCy just skipped down it but the HC took a bit more persuading. After that, we discovered there was also a stream in our way and no easy way to go round. As you can see my route choice was on top form today!
We got back it time (just) and the HCy decided she wanted to visit the toilets. So we went in to discover they were all blocked but still sort of working. Until the HCy decided to flush the toilet. There was a long pause then a shreik and a rather frantic HCy burst out the cubicle with a small trail of toilet water trying to follow. Neither of us had seen a toilet overflow before so the HCy was horrifyed (the HC laughed so hard she choked - I know, I'm the very image of a sympathetic sister!).

Mawbray Dunes
1st January 2017

Well the event didn't get off to too great a start today for me because the HC was having a bit of a mild difference in opinion with her sister. As often happens when we have these sorts of discussions, things quickly broke down into playful shoving. Unfortunately the HC chose a bad moment to shove the HC, who only had one foot on the ground, so the HC went flying!
When we started both the HC and HCy spent rather more time closely examining the ground than we would have preferred. The first time the HC tripped the HCy was giving her a hard time when she faceplanted mid sentence! Then later the HCy fell over backwards into some long grass and got stuck. The most spectacular faceplant occurred when the HC discovered a hidden pothole that ate her legs! *eek!* She was halfway through extricating herself from the hole when the HCy decided to test how deep the hole was by standing in it. The HC then lost her balance and managed to step on the HCy's foot so the HCy screeched and shoved the HC. So we were flailing around and wailing in the hole for a while. *nervous laugh*
The event today was the same setup as Powter How last month - the controls were in 8 triangles. Apart from the faceplanting not much happened *shrugs* We checked the cafe/garden centre place by the car park to see if the chinchillas from last year were still there (If you haven't read that part you might want to go and do so now - it was quite the tale!) but they weren't. *Noooo!* However we got to stroke the cats and have some hot chocolate so all is good!


2016

December

Binsey
27th December 2016

Well there's a bit of a pattern forming for the events I go to around Christmas! *shrugs* Oh well. Last year the HC and HCy did uncharacteristically well and won a calendar but I have the suspision that this year things won't go so well - today the HC kinda forgot to read some of the instrustions so was oblivious to the fact that if you got certain controls together then you could obtain double points. *Oops!* However we managed to sabotage ourselves well and truly when the HC forgot to check the time before setting off. Might as well do the job properly!! Oh well, despite being a slight disaster, it was fun and the view was very nice.
Afterwards everyone went for soup and mince pies at one of the borderliners' house. Normally the HC doesn't talk very many people because she's tired from running and doesn't know many people but today it seemed that everyone wanted to talk to me!! (not as the HC though *phew!*) Seriously though, it was scary the change that comes as soon as you start uni: everyone seems to sense it and want to ask you stuff. *Waaaahhhh*

Powter How
18th December 2016

I'm home now! *yaaay!* (Well actually I've been home for some time but I forgot to write Headless Chicken *oops*). Anyway, we went to the equivalent of this event last year which was a score event. However, this year it was different - the controls were in triangles and you had to complete one triangle of controls before you could get any of the controls in other triangles. This was all really interesting but when the HC and her sister discovered that they'd managed to mix triangles they had a bit of a tantrum.
We didn't go round very fast but when we were near the finish I decided things needed to change so I went charging off down the path, wailing loudly. The HCy was startled for a second by my unexpected head start so she stood there before realising that she was going to get beaten so she charged off too! It was hard to tell who punched the finish first amongst all the pushing and shoving (but the HC suspects it wasn't her). Ah sisterly love! At least I succeded in embarassing the HCy!


November

Oxford City Race
19th November 2016

I've found since going to uni that being asked what your plans for the weekend are is a pain. My response is often "I'm going orienteering!" which is followed by a long pause before they say "volunteering? oh what are you doing?" At this point I then have to explain I'm going ORIENteering not VOLUNteering. By this point I was getting rather fed up so when some one asked me this week I gleefully told them I was volunteering at an orienteering event. *evil laugh*
Anyway, that aside my family came down to take part (and to see me). I was happy to be seeing them again after 6 weeks (even the HCy!).
The HC wasn't sure how to write this entry because the fact I'm attending an event in this region of the world gives some stuff away (and we all know how secretive the HC likes to think she is). However the HC is pretty sure her anonymity is on its last legs anyway *cries inside* because people keep on coming up to me at events and asking me if I'm the HC (one person in the summer figured it out before they'd even spoken to me, which was slightly alarming but at the same time made me proud to give off such a chickeny aura). So yeah, I'm going to keep on pretending that no one knows but maybe not put quite so much effort into it.
So now I've gotten all of that out of the way I can actually talk about the event! The HC got up pretty early today but still managed to nod off for half an hour so I got to university parks (where the assembly, start and finish were) a bit later than I'd planned. *oops* What can I say: students can never get enough sleep! So I ended up helping mark the route from the finish to download which was an adventure because everything was really damp so the sticky tape would only stick to itself. *sigh*
The HC then went out on her course, which for some reason ended up going round just about all the places she knew. It was quite confusing because I hadn't seen a map of some of the areas before and more than once I took a wrong turn because I thought I knew where I was going but didn't really. I ended up running in circles round one of the college quads because I couldn't remember which way I came in.
After I finished I had to run back to the college I got lost in to be a marshall at one of the entrances. It was rather cold (and in my post-nap rush this morning I hadn't grabbed as many layers of clothing as I'd thought) so the HC was rapidly becoming an ice block when one of the students brought me out a cup of tea. THANK YOUUUUUUU!! Your random act of kindness made this chicken very happy!
The HC then went to the Oxford Natural History Museum with her family. It's so good!! *squeeeee*


October

Stowe Park
30th October 2016

Well this event was quite interesting - it was in the grounds of a big house (which I think is used as a fancy boarding school). There were several large lochs (sorry LAKES), a huge archway at the front gate, a golf course and lots of statues and follies everywhere! My subject-mate (who really really needs a chicken name) came along again and actually decided to go round the same course as me (I'm not feeling threatened by her rate of improvement... of course not!).
Anyway, we got a lift to the event with some of the other club members. Things didn't get off to the best start because one of them was complaining to the other about how sharing a house with UNDERGRADUATES was a pain before realising we were there and being like "oh darn!! I just complained about undergrads in front of undergrads!" Apart from that they seemed nice though.
For some reason the HC was really fired up today and ran a whole heap of her course!! (I know, I don't know what I was doing either) Because of this I wasn't actually out for that long so I don't have much to talk about. *Noooooo!* Well at least it was fun!

University Parks
22nd October 2016

Well the event today was just for freshers really. The HC went along with one of her fellow biochemists. They'd never been orienteering before so I was expecting them to not be very good. We walked round together and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly she got the hang of it! I'm going to have to come up with another chicken name now though. *blegh* (Chicken names can be fun to make up but some are really difficult!)

Iffley and Rose Hill
19th October 2016

*HC bursts out of nowhere* I'M STILL ALIVE!!!
OK, so I suppose this was technically my first EVER night event! I mean the sky was dark when the event was on but it was in the streets so there were lamp posts. Anyway, the HC sort of forgot that its dark by eight at night so she didn't take a torch (not that I have one!). This was fine except from the HC made a dodgy decision. There was a narrow direct path next to a small stream or a road that went round. I went down the path. BIG MISTAKE!! It would have been fine in the daytime but because it was dark (and there was no street lights) I could see VERY little. I came to a bridge off to the side and didn't know whether to cross it or not. So after much thought the HC decided to go for it. The bridge felt a bit odd but I ignored it and crossed only to walk straight into some railings. It turned out it was a dead end so I turned to go back and due to the direction of what little light there was I could now see the bridge. Or to be more specific I could now see the large hole I'd only just avoided falling through!! I then had to tiptoe back across trying to decide where looked safest.
Everything was fine after that - although I only got back with 1 minute to spare (it was a score event).
I then walked back to where I'm staying but before I could escape off to my room I was caught by some of my friends who told me that some of the rooms are haunted (apparently handprints have been appearing on the OUTSIDE of the windows every floor of this certain staircase). I was still a little on edge from my earlier near miss so at this point the HC was like "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! THE GHOSTS ARE COMING FOR US!!!"


September

Shambellie
24th September 2016

This is the HC's last event before she goes to uni!? Shock horror!! The area used today had a big house in it that used to be the National Museum of Costume (not anymore though) so this was the first event to ever take place there! The area is actually very nice - the earth is VERY sinky but not enough to make it completly lethal and it feels good to run over and the paths are very indistinct which makes things a little tricky. Also the place has HUGE boulders EVERYWHERE so only the ones that are bigger than 3m (or something ridiculous like that) are mapped which is not normal!
The HC had a really good run today - so good she beat her Dad for the FIRST time!! *Yay!* (It was only by a minute, though) However, there was one part of the course that didn't go so well... *dun dun dun* The creaky forest of DOOM - and yes I mean "creaky" instead of "creepy". Said creaky forest of DOOM was in the part of the area that joins to Troston and was kinda plantation-y. This is normally fine for the HC - she used to get scared at the slightest patch of thick forest - but today it was rather windy. I barely noticed how potentialy creepy my surroundings were until something in my perepheral vision moved (never a good thing when you're on your own). The HC almost jumped out of her skin! It turned out the movement had come from a half-fallen tree shifting. Not good! This set of the HC's rather overactive imagination so every time there was an unusual creak from the trees rubbing against each other the HC jumped. I was very happy to be going back to the main area after that!
When I finished I was waiting to download when my Mum pointed out that there was a looper caterpillar on my t-shirt that had been hitching a lift!! (There's a photo of it below on the HCy's hand) The second photo is of some massive toadstools we found in the car park (compass for scale).


Eycott Hill
10th September 2016

It's been a while! There hasn't been much on nearby recently and the HC has been snowed under with forms to fill in so she was glad to get out. She was a little less glad when she saw the depth of some of the bogs she had to cross!
On the way to the second control I came across these huge, fluffy, black caterpillars - some were as big as my pinkie finger!! *YUM* (only kidding). I saw tons of them all the way round!! I also saw some sort of wriggly reptile thing at my feet which I initially thought was a snake so I did a rather impressive jump. I'm still not sure what it was but it was more likely to be a slow worm - it was the wrong colour and size to be a snake.
My course went past a section of impassable marsh near the end. I was some distance past it when I turned and saw that Borderline Chicken and another orienteer were just getting to the marsh. Then suddenly the second orienteer just vanished! The HC was quite a way away so she didn't know what to do. Luckily a short while later they emerged from the bog. *Phew*
When I got back I discovered that the HCy (who had been on the same course as me) had beaten me by 30 seconds. I mean COME ON! 30 SECONDS!!? *bleh* I was feeling a little depressed so I asked her what her caterpillar count was. The HCy stuck her feathers out proudly and announced she'd seen 5. She was a little put out when I told her I'd seen 32! They were EVERYWHERE!
I apologise if this is a little short but when we were unpacking the car I managed to shut my fingers in the car door which wasn't great. Don't worry the headless chicken is still fine enough to write!!
The caterpillar looked a bit like this but more yellowy (this is a fox moth caterpillar):


August

Kames SoSOL
21st August 2016

Well the HC has realised that seeing as she is going to Uni in the very near future (SCARY!) this blog is going to have to evolve. The HC is going to try and continue to orienteer but she isn't sure if she's going to have the time to write about it. Therefore I'm now making the HCy an official co-writer (rather than someone who ocassionally takes over to cause mayhem *shiver*). Oh darn what have I done!
*Muhahaha!* The first step for world DOMINATION has been taken!!
*cringe* So annnywaaay~ by the time we got to the event today there weren't many maps left for entry on the day so the HCy and I ended up going around the orange with one map beetween us (not another orange!). This is basically a recipe for disaster!
Correction: it was a disaster! Did you see the number of times you faceplanted?!
Yeah yeah! I'm beginning to wish I'd pushed you in one of those ponds *sigh*
They weren't ponds! They were flooded mine shafts!!
Even better! *HC smiles creepily*
*Geh!!* OK, I'll behave (for now). So yeah we heard that the area today was Hen Harrier nesting ground so I was really excited to see one. *bleh* But no! Where were they??!
There there, HCy. So moving on, we FORGOT to mention some stuff that happened on the way there. Like how there was some roadworks with the lights stuck on red both ways! We were sitting there for AGGGES!
Oh yeah! There was also this town where it was down as one name on the map and the roadsigns but the school and shops called it a different name. *scratches head, puzzled* It was ODD!
Very strange *nods* Recently it has been raining A LOT - the other day it poured non-stop all day - but it's almost calmed down now. Well except from when we decided to go orienteering! We were hearing from one of the other Solway members today that they went to the world masters (I think?) and it rained so much that by the time they got back to their car the water was past the bottom of the door!! Where was this event? Atlantis??!

Austrian Week Day 1: Dalbeattie Town Wood
8th August 2016

So this week Solway put on our own multi-day event because the Austrian club, OL Kufstein, was coming to stay in the area on holiday. The first event was at Dalbeattie Town Wood (throwing them in at the deep end!) and my family were running the event so I only went round the orange - it was either that or the green and if I did the green it would take a while!
I caught up with the HCy quite early on and neither of us were particularly interested in getting ahead so we ended up going round together. This was.... interesting (the HC grazed her hand and ended up explaining bloodtypes and how they're inherited to the HCy). Several controls later and unplanned lecture over, we realised we were slightly lost. Well.. not lost but we couldn't find the control! It took a lot of flailing around in the same area to discover that the control was actually right next to the path in a hidden gully thing!! WHY?!
We finished without any more adventures and I went back to helping while the Headless Chicky went and pigged out on the blaeberries. My cover was blown today when Welsh Chicken (a REALLY good orienteer who's around my age) came over and asked "Are you the Headless Chicken?" I've never met her before and I wasn't wearing my Headless Chicken T-shirt so how did she know?! *spooky!*
One of the club members who is a little younger than me (she doesn't have a chicken name yet) is taking part in the Da Vinci Decathlon this year (there's an account of what happened when I took part a lot further down. Two years ago?). She's having to do fundraising so she can take part and she has my sympathies!

In the evening after the event there was a buffet in Dalbeattie Town Hall where everyone met up to socialise. The HCy was put in charge of keeping the other kids entertained and had Orienteering twister as the main distraction. However once everyone had eaten, they lost interest in playing O twister and decided to use the sheet for other games. At this point the HC was roped in as another participant in games like sharks vs lifeguards, sheet tag (you tag people by throwing a sheet over them) and blindman's buff. It was rather entertaining because I was so much bigger and heavier than everyone else (in sharks vs lifeguards the sharks have to drag victims under the sheet and the lifeguards have to try to rescue them. Unfortunately I was too heavy for the sharks OR the lifeguards to move *heh heh*). These games then got a bit rough so we played keep the clingfilm ball on the moving sheet, The moon is round (a rather funny/frustrating - it depends if your in on the secret - observation game) and guess the animal / activity from it being acted out. We went home thoroughly worn out!

Austrian Week Day 2: Drumlanrig

9th August 2016

Well today is THE END OF THE WORLD!! (well not really but my exam results came out today) I've never actually been at home when the results have come out before (although I was at Drumlanrig by the time the post came). For some reason there's always an orienteering event on at that time. *bleh*
So anyway! In the morning there was a training event which was a line course. I somehow managed to find all the controls (including a couple on the easy line course *oops*) but I was just about the last finisher. Oh well.
In the afternoon there was a score event (I was tired from helping in the morning and the day before so I went round the orange course again). I was just starting when it began to rain. Seriously?! I didn't get that wet though because the trees kept most of the rain out except from in the more open areas. I was about halfway round when things went a little pear shaped. I was trying to go round a marshy area but there was a fallen tree so I had to go through the marsh. It wasn't actually that sinky but there was a ditch I had to jump over. I was mid-leap when I had the realisation that the other side of the ditch looked significantly more sinky. It was a bit late to be having this revelation and I landed on the other side only to sink into the bog. oh dear. A lot of flailing and squawking and I managed to get out of the marsh with little more than my ankles muddy. *phew*
When the HC was almost finished she was so tired that she zoned out while running along a rocky path. She was just thinking that maybe she needed to pay more attention to where she was putting her feet when she nosedived in the mud spectacularly (at least I hope it was spectacular!). The HC was mostly fine however her trousers weren't - one of the knees was really torn!! The HC's Mum was going to kill her! Help!
Luckily the HC survived telling her Mum - before today I hadn't torn my trousers since Canada, TWO YEARS AGO!! However when she got home she was told off by her friends! On the day that exam results come out my friends have the tradition of texting each other to ask what people got. Unfortunately I left my phone at home (not that there would have been any signal) and I didn't see my results until I got back at 5ish (there was a nasty moment when we couldn't find the envelope! It had been put in the shed because it didn't fit through the letterbox). I looked at my phone and there was a whole heap of messages. The earlier ones were like "So HC, you going to tell me what you got?" which when became "please respond soon! Friend X can't take the anticipation" and there was one scary message like this: "HEADLESS CHICKEN WHERE ARE YOU YOUNG LADY!!" *eek! Hides in corner* I responded to that one first.



Austrian Week Day 3: Mark Hill

11th August 2016

Today a camera crew came to the orienteering!! They came specially to interview the HC. NOT!
There was a relocation exercise at the beginning. It involved taking bearings so the Headless Chicky came with me because she didn't know how to take a bearing (like I'm much better). We were so busy squabbling over how to go about taking a bearing we headed off at a right angle to the direction we were supposed to be heading! Things improved significantly after that (it would be hard for them not to) but our bearings were still a little hit or miss.
When we got back the cameramen were filming people starting and interviewing people. The HC decided to go round a green today (I'm not sure if that was a good decision or not). The HC was rather tired to day so she kept on walking right past her controls and then turning around and finding the control was some distance back the way I'd just come! It was frustrating!!
My run was rather uneventful until the very end when I was approaching my last control. The cameramen were standing on the path and were filming me as I ran towards them. I was jumping like a deer over all the brashings and doing a pretty good job of looking impressive, until I hit an especially deep pile of branches. I lost my balance and then teetered about for a couple of seconds before falling over and doing a pretty decent beached whale impression in trying to get back up. All on camera!! *cringe* After getting back on my feet I managed to run right past the control! *HC has tantrum in the corner*

That evening we all had dinner together at a place in Kippford. The funny thing was that I knew just about everyone working there! There was one of my old da Vinci decathlon teammates, one of my friends and just about half of his family. It was a weird experience!
Things got even more surreal when I ended up sitting at a table with Geo Chicken (whose chicken name I'm considering changing to trangia chicken, for reasons I shall go into), Chem Chicken's dad and another orienteer who doesn't have a chicken name. We'd been talking for a while when it came up in conversation that Geo Chicken has a camping stove collection (!). Geo Chicken was expaining about the benefits of having so many trangias when Chem Chicken's dad suddenly told us that he recently had a dream about a 3-foot wide trangia that you could cook people in! *HC looks nervous* What about chickens??! Geo Chicken admitted sadly that he'd never had a dream about stoves.
After all that when my Mum and I were leaving I thought I was safe from any more strange conversations but one of the Austrians walked past with a glass of something in his hand and said something. My mum asked "what's that?" and he held the glass up and replied "WHISKEY!" and did this really weird laugh. The HC made a quick getaway, having been exposed to too much randomness.



Austrian Week Day 4: Corncockle Plantation and Spedlin's Flow

12th August 2016

The event today was called sudoku-o which is something I've never heard of before and it's quite complicated. You have teams of three and 27 controls that you have to find. However, you have to each get 9 controls with the last digit of the numbers going from 1 to 9. This made it quite difficult to divvy up the controls efficiently, which we only had 10 minutes to do!
My team was called Trek which was apparently something from the tour de france but all I could think was "To boldly go where no Chicken has gone before!" Yay! Startrek!! I was on a team with two of the Austrians who were far better runners than the HC so the HC took as many controls in that area near the end that everyone always gets lost in and the others took more of the further out ones. There was a mass start today (first team that had everyone back won). It seemed like just about everyone decided to go to the same two controls because there was a huge stampede! The HC decided it would be safest to hang back a bit - I didn't want to become chicken roadkill!
The HC didn't have any adventures today and got back pretty quickly (seeing as the HC has been taking at least an hour recently to get round I was worrying that to get back in half that time I must have missed something). However I was actually the last of my team to get back! (although we still won! *yay!* this is a first)

July



This summer we decided to go to the welsh five days - the appeal of two days in sand dunes was just too great (and no Scottish 6 days this year, boo!).
By the way for those of you who are curious about the name of the event, "croeso" means "welcome" in Welsh. This caused some confusion when we entered Wales because they had both the English and Welsh on the roadsigns and we thought it was advertising for the event!
I wrote the accout of each day on paper again because I didn't bring my computer.








Here's the photo of the funny sign:



*
There was first aiders at the event (just in case!) and this was the name on their van:


This reminded me that Wales is basically the land of Merlin!! (and all that stuff) I don't know much about the Arthurian Legends but I loved the TV show "Merlin" (which was partially filmed in Wales) so I was kinda hoping to find Camelot in the forest or something (no luck yet!).


Here's a photo of the bed. It was soooooo comfy *sigh* I almost fell asleep!



The bath below was at the entrance to the assembly area. Luckily I didn't need to use it because I had already had a shower in the form of the rain.



*Phew!* the end!


June

Dalbeattie Open Area
22nd June 2016

I decided to just help today (I was going to have to help anyway and I still haven't really gotten over the time I got a bit stuck in a ditch here). On the way to the start there was a gate which I had to climb over. Unfortunately for the HC, she decided to do a little hop to help her get over and tripped over the gate! *SPLAT!!* Sometimes I shouldn't be allowed out on my own.
The open area is very rough this year because there haven't been any animals grazing it. This meant one unfortunate orienteer came across an adder sitting under one of the kites!! *eek!* (finding adders while orienteering is always nerve-wracking, the HC once stepped on one while crossing a field!)
Although the HC didn't go round a course, she did collect some controls in with her sister in tow (oh boy). It was certainly interesting at times! The lumps in the ground were hidden so we both fell over quite a lot and falling over while carrying O-gear often results in a lot of flailing around. *nervous laughter* Oh NO!! The Headless Chicky is coming!! GAH!
HA! "A BIT" of flailing?!! Do you know how many times you hit me over the head with that bag of controls?
Um, no... HOWEVER do you know how many times you got me with the stuff you were carrying?!
That's unimportant!
Right. Well can I get back to what I was doing?
I suppose. *sniff* although one of these days I'm going to take over for REAL. *evil laugh*
*Phew* She's gone now! Well Chicken out!

Corncockle Plantation and Spedlin's Flow
15th June 2016

Thinking about it, I saw quite a lot of animals today. There was a deer on the way to my second control, a dog that seemed determined that I would be it's next meal (I don't taste good, promise!) and of course the ever present midges. However the HCy had an even more eventful time - she told me that she sat down on a mossy lump and there was some sort of animal inside said mossy lump that kicked her!!
There is this one area of Corncockle that I always get lost in. Well, not lost but I can't find my control without flailing around in the bracken and rhododendron for like half an hour. This time was no better! I managed to walk right past it and went off in the wrong direction to look at the other places it could be before realising my mistake and eventually finding it. Gah! Why does it always go wrong?!


Hills Wood
8th June 2016

To get to the start for hills wood events you have to walk up a large hill. In the past this hill had trees growing on it but sometime between the last event and now the hillside had undergone a transformation!! The place looks completely different without the trees! Also it wasn't only the trees that had gone, the path up to the fieldy bit was covered up in brashings. Before the name of the area didn't fit that well but now it really doesn't at all!
I've recently come to the realisation that I'm not going to be a junior for much longer (depending on your definition) so I'm going to have to try and act my age!! *tries to look grown up* Yeah, I don't think I'm going to have much sucess but I doubt I'll still be allowed to wear my Solway Junior t-shirt when I'm like thirty.
Recently the weather has been really sunny and HOT but today things got kinda thundery. Hills Wood isn't that large an area but because of the hills, if you can't actually see anyone it feels like you're all alone. This combined with the weather meant there was a rather spooky atmosphere. Also, according to the planner there's a haunted castle near the area. A couple of years ago this would have freaked the HC out big time but today I quite enjoyed it. *Whooooooooooooooooooooooo*
...What was that?!! HELP!!!!


Scottish Schools Oreinteering Festival: Dalkeith Park
3rd June 2016

Wow two events in a week! I'm on a roll!! Last year I didn't go because I was concerned about missing too much school but now I've sort of left school (it's complicated).
In the event information today it said the amount of climb was "negligible" - the HC had a sinking feeling at that - but there was a huge valley/gorge thing that separated the finish and last control from the rest of the course.
The HC didn't have a very good run today. It started of not very well - I almost went running off in the wrong direction! Things didn't really improve - when I got to my first control I went running in the wrong direction again!! After that though my navigation improved! However the HC barely got to number two when she went splat in a pile of nettles, brambles and... mud (I'm pretty sure it wasn't mud). The weird thing was that one knee was all nettle stings and the other was all bramble thorns, weird huh?
Then I discovered I had a little hitchhiker, there was a little catepillar crawling over my t-shirt . It was cute.
Things calmed down for a while after that until I came across a whole bunch of girls in red on my course. It didn't look like they'd done much orienteering before (there was a lot of running in circles going on) so I sort of ended up helping them. We were in a narrow area where there was a steep drop on one side (negligible) and a field on the other. All the controls we were looking for were down the hill so you had to go down at the right point. There was one control that you couldn't see from the path and I had to convince them that it was down there.
Afterwards I was talking to Geo Chicken and he was telling me that recently he went to an event where his first control was on a significant tree in... (wait for it) ... a FOREST!!! So he was going to all of the slightly bigger trees and looking behind them. It sounded like looking for a needle in a haystack!


The Crichton
1st June 2016

Ha ha, it's been a while since I orienteered (like a month and a half!???). How have I survived so long?
It was really warm - summer has ARRIVED!! *gasp* In fact there were no clouds in the sky at all, so what country is this again?
Today, through some sort of strange fluke I came THIRD (what is the world coming to!?!) and that wasn't out of three! In fact I managed to beat a whole heap of runners *HC looks smug*
We went home past George's tree but there was no one in it *sniff* If you don't know who George is (was) then you need to take a look at the last time I was at the Crichton (back in June last year). On another note entirely, is it just me or is "Crichton" reeeally hard to spell?

April

Drumlanrig SOSOL
17th April 2016

I learnt an important lesson today - other orienteers don't always know what they're doing (even if they look like they do and are far more experienced than you!). I was looking for one of my controls today and I was keeping an eye on some people I'd figured out were on the same course as me. Generally this is a good idea for me because quite often I'll get to the area a control is in but have no idea where it is exactly. So one of the people went up the hill and I thought it was a bit early and that they must have messed up but then the other person (my Mum) headed off in the same direction. At this point I was confused - surely the control was another 50m further on the spur? I almost kept on going but then I thought they'd found the control so I went up the hill too. It turned out that actually the control was around where I'd thought it was initially *NOOOOOO!* The HC wasn't a happy bunny.
To get to the finish the HC took an alternate route that involved running down a gully (it's not as dangerous as it sounds, there was a path!). It was really fun (*Whhheeeeeee!*) the only problem was stopping at the bottom!

Culteuchar and Dron
10th April 2016

This event was rather warm and sunny. In the early stages I saw TWO deer!! *yay!* Things were going fairly smoothly until the beginning of the SAGA OF THE FENCE OF DOOM! It all began with a fairly innocent looking fence that was crossed by squeezing between the parallel wires. Then things took a step up with a barbed wire fence. It's been a while since I've come across a barbed wire fence with no alternative crossing points and the last time ended painfully. I was lucky this time and got over it unscathed but the HC was a little flustered after that.

Livingston Urban
9th April 2016

Well we didn't get of to a great start today - we got to the event fine but the registration / enquiries / download for this event was inside the school we were parked outside. The only problem with this was that we couldn't find the way into the school.. we were walking around it for quite some time.
There was an issue with the starts today and they were running 20 minutes late. This was great for one orienteer who was delayed and turned up thinking they were horribly late but was actually just on time for their start. There was another poor lost soul that was in their start box when they had a crisis about the whereabouts of their compass - which was between their teeth at the time! Well we all have off days.
When I was most of the way round my course I had a control in the middle of some play equipment and it was veeeeery difficult to not have a go - it looked really good!!
I mentioned earlier that we were parked by a school, our car was in the netball court! Here's a photo below (it was taken at the end so just about everyone else had gone).


Tarn Hows
2nd April 2016

Recently it has rained a bit. Just a little bit! Today was a mud bath. This was OK until some hills were added into the equation (Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!) And there were also some rather deep pools masquerading as slightly damp areas (can I have my leg back please?) Aside from that I got on pretty well with the mud - at one point there were high fives all round (SPLAT!!).


March

Mabie Forest
19th March 2016

Err.. um... So there was an event at Mabie huh? Interesting...

Well I was looking through the photos from this event and I found this:

Comfy, huh?

Dumfries and Galloway School Championships
18th March 2016

This was my last regional schools championships *sniff* it feels weird to think that. This year it was at Cream O' Galloway again and my school sent a reasonably big team. There was the HCy, Drama Chicky, a few S2s, 3s and 4s, me and an S5. The HCy was running as an S4 (although in reality she's still an ickle S1) which was freaking out our team mates! I was the last from my school to start so I was a little surprised by the frequency I saw the others. The course that I was doing (light green) sort of did two loops around the area and I somehow managed to overtake the S5 from my school that was on the light green and didn't realise until I was starting on the second loop of my course and I came across him on the first.
I spent a lot of time helping people today - I had to convince a couple of primary kids they really DIDN'T want to go crawling through a gorse bush in the direction of a crag. Near the end some of my team mates saw me and thought "Oh there's the HC! She'll know where she's going!!" and followed me. I did know but unfortunately I was going to a rather out of the way control they didn't have. Oh dear. Well that's why you don't follow people.
The results were quite funny today: the HCy came second, Drama Chicky came second and I came second... It's a conspiracy!!

Compassport Cup / Trophy: Dumyat, Stirling
13th March 2016

Oh boy, I'm writing this in the end of MAY! Let's hope my memory decides to play ball!!
Dumyat is a hill next to Stirling University and the longer courses went all over the hill but the course I was on stayed in this small foresty bit. Said small foresty bit looked pretty simple according to a brief glance at the map, I mean there might be a couple of contours here and there but nothing bad, right? So I was just leaving the first control and I was figuring out how to get to the next control when I came to a rather steep drop. It trurned out the contours here and there were very steep slopes. The HC has a less than satisfactory track record when it comes to steep slopes *cough*Lanark!!*cough* However, for once I actually managed to do the sensible thing and go around! The HC is in real danger of becoming sort-of sensible! The horror!!

3
Ahem. The other thing that happened today was that we had to wait around for quite a while because we were borrowing kit for the schools (see above) and the HCy managed to invade the Stirling University Reenactment Club.

February

I pretty much lived in the Chemistry room this month (and under the school stage but that's another story).


January

Edinburgh Big Weekend Day 1: Edinburgh
23rd January 2016

I'm SOOOO tired. *yawn* I was supposed to be doing the women's open course today but then I discovered it was 7 km. No thank you! Instead I was on the same course as my parents. (it was only 4.7 km - which in my book is still considered kinda long)
Today some of the courses had so many controls that they had to borrow some SI air dibbers for people to use. My mum ended up borrowing one and they were quite odd. Punching normal controls is touch less (you just wave it near the control) and it flashes, then makes a *peep peep peep* noise. However you have to punch the clear, start and finish normally - which is a bit tricky because the strap the SI air comes with is designed to go around your wrist.
The day got off to an iffy start. We were following the tapes to the start when at the last turn we almost went the wrong way (a 180 error before we'd even begun!). There was a large archway in front of start with "Edinburgh meat market" written on it. There wasn't any sign of any meat markets there now.

Things were going sort of OK for me (except from my huge map attempting to smother me) until number three. An interesting feature of some of the areas used today was that they had multiple levels going on. This was a little bit mind blowing as it was quite difficult to tell what level some controls were on and even harder to work out how to get there! It was quite easy to tell that number three was on the lower level but getting there proved difficult. Things calmed down for a while but then number eight was a bit tricky. Once again there were two levels but this time it was difficult to tell which level the control was on (it turned out to be on the top level). Here's a photo of number 14, which I had a similar problem with. Can you spot the control - I couldn't. *bleh*

What I found quite funny was that you can run around the streets of Edinburgh dressed in funny clothes and wielding an oversized map and no one bats an eyelid. However as soon as you get to the royal mile everyone stares like you have an extra head! Surely this should be the other way round - Chewbacca has been known to hang around on the royal mile.
Not much else happened but I'm knackered - Edinburgh has hard pavements! The finish today was in the Meadows, which were rather muddy!

On the upside, I got to eat tablet and spend the afternoon in a museum and go round the George's Square maze! *yay* When we were walking back to the car through the meadows we saw far weirder sights than a few orienteers! There was someone in a hammock and a game of Quidditch going on in the background!



Pits n' Bumps - Barhill Plantation
9th January 2016

This event was supposed to be held last year but was postponed because it was really windy (no one wants to get squished by a falling tree). Today there wasn't a wind but it was pretty cold and it rained again - you'd think the sky would run out!! The rain started off not so bad but then it got really heavy. My dad was the planner so we all had to help run the event. The HCy was having doubts about going out but I was determined to have a run (well, kinda). The HC is no fair weather chicken!!
This year there was a twist to the usual setup. As well as the normal controls (all of which are on pits or "bumps"), there were also five bonus controls (which were worth 30 points as opposed to the normal 10). (yay!) However the area of the map they were in was blanked out and the only way to find them was to find one of the normal controls that had a map section attached that showed the location of a bonus control.
The HCy and I decided to target the bonus controls. (MAP MEMORY!!!) We found the first bonus control no problem but after that things got trickier - we couldn't find any map sections! When we finally came across a map section and went to find the control, we couldn't find it but we found a different one!! After some more flailing about in the "sea" of bracken, we realised we didn't have much time left so we decided to head back. On the way back we found two map sections but we didn't visit the controls (one was for the control we found by mistake earlier and the other was pretty out of the way so we didn't go). We finished in time today!!
Despite the weather believing that it was monsoon season or something, I walked home and while making my way through the woods I saw two red squirrels chasing each other through the trees.


Mabie Knoll Bagging
2nd January 2016

Wow, I've orienteered every day of this year so far, is the whole year going to be like this?! Compared to the crazyness of yesterday, today was comparitively normal. I'd learned my lesson from yesterday and wore TWO pairs of trousers and I took gloves! It was yet another score event and I was going round with the HCy (story of my life at the moment!) However, something was different this time!! (shock horror) For Drama Chicky (one of the HCy's friends from school) came with us.
Chem Chicken was planning this year and he led us up to the "secret" start - officially it's secret but seeing as it's in roughly the same area every year it isn't actually that confidential, but don't tell anyone you heard that from me. *HC looks both ways suspiciously*
We were a few controls into THE PLAN when I was running in front of Drama Chicky. I'd forgotten I was wearing my Headless Chicken T-shirt so I was suprised when she asked "So what's with all this headless chicken mumbo jumbo?" MUMBO JUMBO??! Eeh?

I'm afraid she didn't really get an answer, I was so taken aback.
Later on, the HCy got too hot and took off her gloves - but didn't have anywhere to put them. I ended up shoving them down my gaiters (which made my calves look pretty muscley - or I had funny shaped legs)
Things didn't go very well today - we got lots of controls but we were about 10 minutes late back. *Nooo!* This was mostly down to THE PLAN being a little optimistic and also that as soon as the HCy saw a control she wanted to get it (including the ones about a hundred metres away with a stream, a hill and a lot of nasty undergrowth in the way) We were at the top of the big hill, punching our last control when we should have finished (and by big hill I mean half the forest away). I think we were the last back. The HC was not a happy bunny / chinchilla (read yesterday's entry if you don't understand what I mean).
On the bright side there was cake at the end. *yay* This is not a normal occurence but this was the 25th Mabie Knoll Bagging (It's older than me!!) so we thought it deserved some recognition - I think everyone else agreed judging by the amount of cake left! Here is the before and after:


Mawbray Dunes
1st January 2016

A lot happened today (it's safe to say that we're slightly nutty for going out so early on New Years day - in the first 15 miles of the journey we only saw three cars and a pushbike!). On the way there we went through a town called Silloth which had all these old, Victorian houses painted in colours almost as bright as Tobermory! Also, the main roads were cobbled!! It was pretty. *HC looks happy*

We arrived to the sight of an orienteering control hung on a flowerpot man (now that really takes me back!) and a goat that had decided that the grass on the other side of the fence was definately greener.

There was a cafe / garden center / zoo (?) next to the car park and we ended up going inside to look for toilets before we headed off. We went inside through the garden center bit (being cereful of the sliding door *bleh*) and right next to the door was a cage containing what appeared to be a white rabbit. A rather old and funny shaped rabbit with a tiny head. I don't have much experience of rabbits apart from chasing them out of the garden so I was having a good look when the front half of the "rabbit" detached itself and started climbing about and waving it's long tail around. None of which is particularly rabbit-like behaviour.

However this was NOT some sort of mutant rabbit zombie from Mars (phew). It was actually two chinchillas sitting very close together!!

You see what I mean!! There were more odd creatures in the garden centre but more on that later, now we shall get to the actual orienteering part. The area today looked like this:

Also it was very cold and windy and I didn't bring gloves! *wail* It was another score course today and I ended up going around with the HCy (why me?!). It was actually pretty fun today as I seemed to be more full of beans than her for once and she kept on faceplanting in the heather, which was pretty funny (don't worry, she thought so too). At one point she was running ahead of me down a dune and she tripped and went SPLAT. I had to just about jump over her and when I turned around from punching the control, she was still on the ground looking a lot like a four-legged starfish. (If the HCy is reading this, I am NOT saying you look like a starfish. Please don't get the wrong idea!)
So once we'd finished we went back to the garden center place to look at the animals there. There were various ferrety things, a duck and also a rabbit (an actual rabbit this time!). There was also a black cat that at one point tried to stalk a robin on the other side of the window!



December

Binsey
27th December 2015

The event today was another score (normally it's at Whittas park) and I went round with the HCy. *looks around to check if she's there*
Binsey and Whittas park are right next to each other - as in all that separates them is a wall. We were driving along in the car and we saw Whittas park everyone remarked about how high it looked, then Binsey came into view. It was even higher than Whittas Park!!
There were two courses on offer today, both had a time limit of 45 minutes and were score courses with controls on reentrants or boulders (a bit like an alternative version of pits n' bumps). However on the short course you could visit the controls in any order but on the long you had to alternately visit a reentrant then a boulder. The long sounded kinda daunting (I had images of all the boulders on one side of the map and all the reentrants on the other) so we went round the short.
Things went reasonably well until we were at the furthest point (as well as things can go when the two of us are slightly lacking in common sense and we only had one map between us). Anyway, the HCy did a face plant in the heather and twisted her ankle slightly. We then realised we only had 10 minutes to get back. Oh dear.
In the end we did get back in time (we cut it pretty fine though) and the HCy actually reached the finish before me, sore ankle or not!
On the bright side (ha ha) it was a sunny day today, I'll have to come to the lake district next time I want to sunbathe!
Oh yeah! I almost forgot (!) to say that we saw some people paragliding over Binsey! I bet they were confused!!


Powter How Woods
20th December 2015

The weather this morning was quite something!! We were delayed slightly in leaving the house because there was lightning nearby and on the way down in the car it was hailing so hard that I thought the windscreeen was going to break. The faint of heart would have turned back but we kept on going. Luckily when we got to the event the rain had passed and at one point there was even some blue sky!! *gasp*
There were 3 courses on offer today, an easy set up like a normal white, a short which was a score course and a long which I shall talk about more later. *heh heh* The HCy and I decided to do the score course (not together though) while my mum and dad decided to go round the long. Why is there always such an abundance of score courses around christmas and new year?!
The area was quite small - it was a hill with trees on sandwiched between two roads. The hill wasn't that big but in places it was rather steep *bleh* and slippy *double bleh*. I didn't run into any major navigational problems but I was rather puzzled by the route the HCy was taking. We started out in the same direction before she suddenly disappeared somewhere. I next saw her about 15 minutes in (we had 45 minutes) and she looked like she was heading back. I decided not to comment on her navigational choices - being chased by an angry chicken is NOT fun! I saw her yet again when I was near finishing and she was also near finishing. After I finished she explained her route choice and I still didn't get it *sigh* little sisters...
Are you talking about me again?
Um. No?
Hmph, I'll let you off this time but if you talk about me again without my permission, I'll eat your computer!! *HCy exits with an evil laugh*
Phew, she's gone now!
Moving on now, I shall now tell you about the long course. On the maps it said the long course was 1.9km and had 18 controls - though there was mention of a twist at control 18. I had a feeling that there was something fishy about this so I went on the short course. I visited control 18 and the looks on people's faces was slightly amusing, just slightly. There was a sign at control 18 saying that they now had to go and visit 12 of the controls they'd already visited in any order they pleased. My dad said people kept on stopping, trying to remember how many controls they'd punched.


November

Markhill
21st November 2015

Ha ha, I remember the last (and first) time I orienteered at Markhill. The weather was pretty hideous - until the event was over!! It couldn't be more different today. for the last three weeks or so it has rained almost every time I've stepped outside but today the sky was BLUE, it was also freezing. By freezing I mean first frost of the year and ice in the puddles freezing.
I decided to take some fingerless gloves to go round my course. Halfway round I realised my hands felt like they'd met some liquid nitrogen and was just thinking "hm, that's funny, I'm wearing gloves.." when I realised that actually I wasn't - they were back at the start in my fleece pocket!
When I make stupid route choices they often have a theme for that day (eg. cliffs, steep hills..etc). Today's theme was water features. When I was at the furthest out point there was some rather nasty dark green stuff which I decided to take a shortcut through - which was a dodgy route choice in istelf). I was almost out the other side when I came across a small stream/huge ditch. It was a little wider than I liked (you had to commit yourself to either get across or take a bath) and the low branches meant jumping was difficult but I was unwilling to go around. I stared the ditch down for a couple of minutes before scrambling across in a slightly undignified fashion.
A watery disaster averted, I continued on with the course until I ran into difficulty with another water feature. The easiest way to the control was to follow a small stream. I didn't get too close incase there were hidden marches, unfortunately my definition of too close was different to the stream's and once again I found myself sinking into what I'd taken to be a patch of grass. I accidentally made a noise a bit like a startled chicken while I tried to escape the marsh (apologies to anyone I gave a fright).
I somehow managed to finish my course unscathed - running through the brashings as fast as you can isn't often a great idea!) but I almost became unstuck on the way back after the event when I was walking along a ROAD and didn't notice a rather substantial branch. Oops.

High Stand
14th November 2015

I'm tired! *yawn* Today's event was cold - well at the beginning it was but halfway through it became kinda toasty! - so I ended up going round before my mum. This meant I spent the whole time looking over my shoulder. I was determined to stay ahead so I ran a lot more than normal, although I began to get slightly concerned that I saw no sign of her - so I assumed she'd taken an alternative route and overtaken me. After I finished I found out she made a mistake early on and that was why I hadn't seen her. *bleh*
Now to the course! On the Border liners facebook page they advised everyone on the longer courses to wear, and I quote, "leg armour" *HC goes pale*. Needless to say the best way to get around was to stay on the paths as much as possible, which is no different form my normal oreinteering style - not! Early on I mistook an almost-path for a path and ended up in a mess of bracken and brambles. I was beginning to despair of ever escaping the undergrowth but luckily the HCy ran down the path I was looking for so I could see where it was. The rest of my course was fairly uneventful (although I almost fell on my backside in the mud at one point!).

Simpson Ground
7th November 2015

What is this?! I'm updating twice in two weeks!!!? Oh well, I'd best get a move on then. The weather today was typical lake district weather (it was almost as bad as taking a shower fully clothed on the journey there). Luckily for us the rain sort of stoped for the orienteering. I say sort of because I was concentrating so hard on the navigation I'm not sure if it was raining or not.
In the information for the event there was a warning about very deep bogs so I spent most of my time getting ready being lectured not to do anything stupid (see previous entry for the definition of stupid).
The area we were in is near Haverthwaite so I had high expectations for something complicated with not much in the way of paths and I was a happy chicken. The courses were shorter than normal but there were around the same number of controls so they were very close together, though still very hard to find! I was fine getting to the area of the control but I kept on overshooting by a couple of meters. I mostly managed to avoid the bog until I'd almost finished. I came across a rather wide, squishy looking marsh and had a bit of a bear hunt senario (I can't go over it, I can't go round it, I'll have to go through it). I got a few steps through when there was a nasty sucking noise and my whole lower leg disappered. Luckily it wasn't piranhas but I was still in a bit of a pickle because there were no conveniently placed branches to grab and when I took a step forward, my other leg sank in! Chicken Pi was behind me (which was unusual - normally when the marshes strike I'm alone so there's no one to hear the screams) she was rather concerned about my predicament, and while trying to get round the deep bit she fell in too! The marsh of DOOM claims another victim!!
The parking arrangements today were quite something! Everyone was parked along a forest road for a stretch about a mile long (unfortunately we were towards the further away end so it was a long walk back to the car). Not long after I got back, the rain started pouring down again.


October

Dalbeattie Town Wood
31st October 2015

Ha ha! Long time, no see!! This was my first time orienteering since the 6 days and the weather was not being understanding. Let me put it another way - by the time I finished, I felt like I'd been for a swim in the Loch! Surprisingly, considering the weather, lots of people turned up (and not just the dead keen ones with that glint in their eye - you know who you are!). On another note, you know the phrase "do as I say, not as I do"? Well I may have been slightly dodo-ish (is that a proper word?) and went through just about every bit of gunky undergrowth in the place after saying I was going to avoid it. I tried, I really did - for a grand total of two minutes... In the past in this wood I have run into some difficulties in an area near the loch. It contains both deep bogs and thick vegetation (this time I fell foul of both) First I discovered the killer honeysuckle and by the time I was aware what was going on, I was completely tangled! Shortly afterwards I discovered a surprise bog and almost lost a leg. It was such a surprise I squealed quite loudly - my apologies to anyone in the vicinity. *HC looks embarrassed* I then almost missed the control and walked just about all the way around it! Things went sort of smoothly after that (as smoothly as it can go with a flustered chicken involved) but for some reason my feet were trying to trip me up. I'm not kidding!! Every time there was an obstacle to avoid, I managed to trip over it. *grumble grumble* However, I may be complaining a lot now but secretly I enjoyed it! (Don't tell anyone else but near the end I was jumping in the puddles!!)


August

The Scottish 6 Days - Highland 2015

Sorry for the delay in uploading but I've been away for two weeks (one week for the 6 days and another to recuperate) and I've been working like mad to get this ready. I'm going to upload it one day at a time (to drag out the suspense *evil laugh*). The scanner took a couple of liberties with cropping the images so I had to.. repair them so if anything looks a little odd that's why.

The first two pictures below are from the drive to the "race arena" and the last one is of us all wearing our headless chicken tops. Just to be confusing, the number of HC tops is rising, so if you see someone wearing one it probably won't be me! (by the way the colour of the top doesn't mean anything!!)
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The first couple of photos from today are of the assembly area and the pontoon bridge next to it and a close up of some of the flags flying over assembly.
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UPDATEI forgot to tell everyone about what happened on the way back to the car park. The HCy was walking along with my Dad when someone finished eating a banana and hid the skin under a log at the edge of the road. The HCy turned to my Dad and says in a loud voice "Daddy, did you know that it takes five years for a bannana skin to break down?" The person in front sped up.




Wow, there's lots of pictures for this day! Well I suppose I'll start with telling you that once again Solway's sunshine tent made an appearance at the 6 days.

The next few photos are of various random things we spotted around Assembly. The first is a tree we saw on the string course (it's terrifying!), the photo in the middle is some people we saw walking through assembly (those hats *HC laughs*) and to the right of that is the HAVOC banner.
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The next four pictures are from the WOC relay. The photo on the top left is the view of the finish area with the flags of participating countries and the big house in the background. The other top picture is of a flower arrangement spelling out IOF. The bottom two are of the big screen and a map covered in elite's autographs.
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My last photo from this day is of the assembly field at the time we left. I must say, it's rather empty!



The first photo is of the string course tent - doesn't everyone look happy! (the HCy looks like she's about to murder someone) The colour of this year's helper t-shirts was purple, yay! This was great because this year all helpers had to wear them, although there wasn't enough for everyone. Last time the tops were yellow (much like our sunshine tent!) which went down like a very yellow, lead balloon. We had to name it "the t-shirt of power" just to get people to wear it! This time there were no t-shirts of power but there was a PURPLE PEN OF POWER. This was the pen for writing on helper's bibs that they neded a punching start. The next photo is of this immensely powerful.. item of stationary... hmm I need to work on my descriptions.
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In the week we were away, we went to a sand sculpture competition and to our suprise there were TWO snail and the whale entries! (it's quite hard to see here but there are snails on both whale's tails)
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Hmm... well seeing as I didn't go to this day there isn't much I can say about it, as you can see from our washing line from this day.




I only have one photo from this day and it's of people making their way to the starts. It's a looong way up!
I shall now tell you the parts I forgot to put in the first bit. Geo Chicken has definately earned his Headless Chicken status today (up until now he had a chicken name but I wasn't sure if he was chickeny enough to deserve it). He had a bit of a mix up looking for number 7 and ended up at his number 8. He checked his descriptions and saw that the number was there so he punched it, not realising that it was not the control he was looking for. Geo Chicken then set off on a bearing to where he thought 8 was but of course didn't find it so he came back and relocated on 8, still thinking it was 7. He then set off to find 8 again and ended up stumbling across the control. Not recognising it, he punched it as number 8 but kept on going with his course. He didn't realise his mistake until he was handed his splits at download!
For those who haven't been to the 6 days, there are badges you can get if you compete well enough over four or more days. There are three types of badge: bronze, silver and gold. For Headless Chickens the chances of achieving any badge are slim to none so this can make badges seem like an unreachable dream. However hope is not completly lost! I got a bronze badge!!! *HC grins* (before anyone starts an enquiry about my suitability to be the Headless Chicken I would like to point out there were unusual circumstances) Due to WOC and the 6 days running side by side, some of the people that entered primarily came to watch WOC and for some reason didn't turn up for any of the 6 days. This pushed me way up the results (I was around last out of the actual finishers every day!). I would like to thank all those people that didn't go round, without you all I might have never have got a badge!

July

Killingworth Urban
12th July 2015


I wasn't feeling so great today so I decided to take it easy, despite being entered on the second longest course. Killingworth is a pretty great urban area, it's a lot like Erskine in that it's like a maze. I was about halfway round today when I came across some concrete pygmy hippos just randomly plonked on a paved area.
My Mum found this hilarious video on youtube about the killingworth hippos. It starts awkwardly but if you stick with it, it's really funny (especially the bit about cut grass and his reaction to the dog - I'm pretty sure the same dog barked at me when I was there!). You can watch the video HERE.

Mabie Forest
2nd July 2015


The weather at this event was awful so I ended up going around the medium with the HCy. We were tired because it was the last day of term so we ended up singing songs to keep ourselves going (and beautifully out of tune they were too!). When we eventually got back we were rewarded for our efforts with a barbeque. Yay!


June

Kirkcudbright Sport For All maze
27th June 2015


This past week I was away so when I had to go and help run the maze straight afterwards I was rather tired. I helped set up the maze and take it apart but the rest of the time I read my book (I'm still reading the same book as the previous maze event!).

Markhill
23rd June 2015


What can I say? I missed this event too - I was away all week - so once again I shall have to call upon my charming sister to tell you all what happened.
Where's Markhill again?
AARGGH! I've already been over this!
Wait, I remember now! This event was the one where the third control was somewhere in an area full of bracken and I had to team up with a bunch of other people to find it. After that we all went round together but we managed to lose the path. When we eventually found the path again, one of the boys started kneeling on the ground yelling "It's gravel! It's gravel! We're saved!" *HCy growls and looks irritated* Finally, right at the end I almost stepped on a female pheasant with a death wish, when it ran right in front of me. It was very birdbrained.
If you've finished can I have my computer back?
No.
I demand my computer back right now!
@L;HGW;OQIEGHB!
No leave the keyboard alone! *various angry chicken noises are heard in the background*

Penrith Urban
21st June 2015


This was my first time in Penrith where I could compete properly instead of being confined to a park. The orienteering itself was fine but I managed to get rather distracted first by a cat and then by some chickens. I know, it sounds bizarre that there would be chickens in the centre of Penrith next to a busy road but there were. They were so FLUFFY! There were a couple of regular chickens, some mega fluffy ones, some speckled looking ones and some tiny mini chickens. They were all over the place - my mum admitted later that she almost stepped on a chicken having a dustbath. After recovering from a cuteness overload, I continued to find the feature the last control was meant to be on, a tree, but it had been cut down! Here is a photo of what it looked like:



Dalbeattie Town Wood
16th June 2015


Today Chem Chicken ended up dragging along a couple of his friends to the event. They'd never really done orienteering before, poor things. Coincidentally, they decided to go round the same course as me so I ended up shadowing them. Unfortunately we had a few... issues finding number 3 and after we eventually found it we thought it best to go round together (especially seeing as one of them wasn't at home going cross-country). I found it quite difficult to keep my route choices mostly limited to the paths - you know what I'm like sometimes, I see some bracken or other obstacle and I really want to go that way. *HC looks irritated at herself* However, there came a control that was far from the paths and seeing as we had two maps between the three of us, we gave the less willing one a map and told him where we would meet up and the other guy and I set off into the wilderness.. *DUN DUN DUN!* We were making good progress when we came to a ditch. Now any other time I could have handled that ditch. Any other time. But the one time there was someone to witness any face planting, it happened. My feet kinda slipped backwards rather than forwards on a slimy tree root and my body kept on going forwards. The result was a winded HC lying stretched across a ditch. It was safe to say it was undignified. And to make matters worse my brain decided to cope with the sudden change in scenery by laughing. This probably freaked out Chem Chicken's friend but looking back at the situation it was kind of funny.

Maze at the Dalbeattie 10km
14th June 2015


Um... I'm not sure there's much I can tell anyone about this event because I brought a book and well... erm maybe I should change my name to bookworm? The one thing that did happen was that I had to rescue a small child from the maze (it's not as dramatic as it sounds). I was sitting there, reading my book, when I overheard a conversation nearby between a small girl and her mother that went something like this:
Mother: Where's your sister?
Child: In the maze.
Mother: You just left her in there... without the map?! (at this point she started to - understandably - get a bit worried)
Child: I need the toilet (she geniuinely said this!)
At this point I decided to step in and took the younger sister round the maze. When I found her she was just standing there, looking slightly bemused. She was wearing a medal from the junior fun run and had managed to get it completely tangled in the netting the maze was made out of. The HCy and I untangled her medal and then I took her around the maze before going back to my book.

Corncockle Plantation and Spedlin's Flow
9th June 2015


It was so warm at this event. *HC pants* And midgey (although that only became a problem after people finished. The last control on my course was tricky. It took ages to find - and I wasn't the only one to struggle! The problem was that everyone only went so far before thinking they'd overshot and going back. To complicate things I had come across one of the long course controls on my way there and managed to convince myself I'd read the number wrong and went back to check.

Scottish Schools' Orienteering Festival: Dechmont Law
5th June 2015


I didn't go to this event because I knew I was going to miss a whole week of school later on in the term so I decided it would be best not to miss any more school than necessary. However the HCy did go so she can tell you all about it...
I came, I saw, I.. erm didn't conquer! The end!!
OK, that's nice HCy but I want to know about the event, not your final result!
Oh right. Um well I went orienteering... When was this event again?
*HC sighs and shakes head* I can't believe the HCy sometimes...
Some time later
Oh! I remember now! This was the event where I met my old friend from orienteering, they were such an old friend they didn't recognise me!
Um OK, that's nice. Did anything else happen?
Um well, I saw my Dad and he kept on insisting he knew where my control was. Eventually I went where he told me to and guess what!
What?
It wasn't my control!
*HC laughs* He's done that to me in the past too!

The Crichton
2nd June 2015


Hmm.. I'm writing this in mid July and the event took place at the beginning of June - I'm not learning, am I? Ah well, at least not much happened orienteering-wise happened in May (due to exams) so I don't have to remember any further back. Now is probably a good time to tell everyone I now have a facebook page so if you want to read more of the Headless Chicken's adventures then click on the link HERE.

So now enough with the distractions, I shall talk about the actual event. I was kind of looking forward to this event because it was my big chance to see George, a plastic monkey that had been put in one of the trees in the Crichton. However it was not to be because someone smashed George about a week before the event *HC looks annoyed*


April

SOL 3: Mark Hill
12th April 2015


The weather on the build up to this event was really, really nice. It was warm and sunny and I even got slightly sunburned! (in April!!) So why, WHY did it rain through almost the entire event? We were on string course duty and it was pretty miserable. We only had four people go round - and two of them were string course helpers. Anyone reading this who was at that event and didn't go round the string course should be ashamed of themself - I don't care if you think you're too old for that stuff or you were busy - the string course is an important part of the big orienteering event experience, and you get sweets for going round!
*ahem* So now my rant is over, time to talk about the event. As I said earlier, it was WET - by the time I came to getting ready for my run, I was pretty wet - and I was wearing full waterproofs. So me and the HCy got ready and went to the start. We had punching starts because we were helpers so we ended up starting in the same minute.
I've never orienteered at Mark Hill before and it is quite rough, in the earlier stages I did a spectacular faceplant in some brashings and almost became a chicken kebab - but didn't as I am here now to tell the tale. The rest of the course went OK, there were a couple of "come out, come out where ever you are, you naughty control!" moments but apart from that everything went smoothly (until the end, that is). The ending section was a sort of openish area with lots of paths and it was round the bit where Motte of Mark is (an old fort that nowadays is just a hill by the sea) and I was so tired by the time I got there I just couldn't cope with the change in scenery. However I managed to finish and just as I was waiting to download guess what happened. The rain stopped!!


The JK that did (but didn't) happen
My family and I didn't make it to any of the days this year, despite being entered in two of the days, but I heard some pretty amazing stories about the event I thought I should write about.

Day 1: Sprint - Lancaster University
From what I've heard and seen (from various pictures and headcams) this looked like just another urban event. However, this event had a dark side - a wet, watery one full of algae. I think the best way to show this is to show you three pictures, taken by ActivNorth.

I've come up with some captions for these pictures:
Picture 1 - I'm an aeroplane..!
Picture 2 - *Glub glub*
Picture 3 - I'm OK... sort of?
In case you're wondering why this happened (and it didn't happen just once) here is the map section showing the run in from the last control to the finish:

As you can see there is a rather tight corner before the water so if you were going too fast you would have an unexpected swim.

Day 2: Middle distance - Ulpha Park and Barrow Fell
I'm afraid I don't have any amusing tales for this day. We were meant to be going but we woke up that morning with various bugs (chicken pox not included) so decided to give it a miss. From what I've heard of this event it was pretty physical so seeing as it was our second day into the easter holidays I'm sort of glad we didn't go.

Day 3: Long distance - Bigland
We were also meant to be going to this event but by then I was heavily bogged down with what my mum calls "the green and purple lurgy" but to most of us is the common cold. It looks like this day was tiring as well judging by some of the pictures (taken by Robert Lines):


Day 4: Relays - Graithwaite
This is the day I really wanted to talk about. There's a video of one of the mass starts and near the end there's a man in a red t-shirt who's worth looking out for. *chuckle* The link to the video is HERE The other thing that happened on this day was that the run in was a mud bath! The lost property list for the JK reads as follows:

One o shoe? Looks like there's a Chickenella on the loose! Although it seems there was more than one person in that situation if you look at these pictures (taken by ActivNorth and Wendy Carlyle)


March

Dumfries and Galloway School Championships
Barhill Plantation
27th March 2015


Last year I was lazy and didn’t write anything for the event but this time will be different. Last year we had an all time high in competitors - about 180 victims, sorry juniors turned up. Seeing as it was at Cream O' Galloway, they were probably only there for the ice cream. This year things were a little smaller but to make up for that we had Flying Chicken come down from up north to see how an ikkle club like Solway handles an event like the Schools. There were only four people from my school competing and I and one of the girls in my year had to have late starts because our maths teacher decided we were NOT leaving halfway through her class. We didn't want to become her next roast dinner so we didn't argue. My classmate was starting about five minutes before me so I had to wait for quite some time (we also got to the start really early) this wasn't so great because I forgot my coat. *Noooooo* I was glad when it eventually came to my start time. When I was just about to start someone rode a horse down the hill and through the start. This was definitely a first for me and I was a little concerned the horse would step on me but it just acted like I wasn't there.
It was pretty hard going today, I always get a bit overanxious at the schools and this time was no exception. Halfway through the course and just as I was wondering if there was anyone still on my course I caught up with three other people on the light green, two boys and a girl. The two boys hadn't a clue what they were doing so the girl had put herself in charge of getting them round. The route to the next control was all uphill so they left me behind. I anticipated where the control would be from past experience but unfortunately I was very wrong, the control was on the other side of some rather nasty looking fallen trees. I eventually got to the control, just in time to see the people in front disappearing into the distance across what my family like to call the Sea of Bracken (quiver and weep at its awfulness! - or not) So I was thinking "well that's that then, I'm not going to catch them any time soon" and was feeling a bit gloomy, until I looked at my map. They were heading in completely the wrong direction! In fact they were on course to cross the area of forest that was clear felled several years ago which is an orienteer's nightmare. (Trust me, I've been there) The rest of the course passed by without anything too unusual happening and I finished without any chicken moments. The person I was up against was already finished - and it looked like they'd probably beaten me. We walked back to download together, and once we'd got our splits, we set about decoding them. Normally reading splits is pretty straight forward but because I was so tired and we were using a slightly different system from normal I didn't quite get it. The first thing I saw was that it said I was second at which point I was feeling pretty depressed. Then I looked across at the other person from my school's splits, assuming she'd beaten me, but her splits also said second. At this point we came to the conclusion that we must have come joint first. The girl I overtook on the course then came back and pointed out that actually I had been seven seconds faster. So who had come first? It took me another five minutes to realise that I didn't know any girls my age with both the map reading ability AND speed to justify a winning time a good fifteen minutes faster than us. Then I realised that the splits took into account both the boys and girls on my course, and that meant Chem Chicken was included. I went to check the results to see if my reasoning was right but couldn't get within a metre of the results board due to a sea of primary kids. I had to ask the HCy and some of her friends to go see for me and they reported back - like the good little spies they are - that all was well, Chem Chicken had beaten me but seeing as he isn't a girl, my title was safe... by seven seconds. Now here is a photo of the results board. If you look carefully you can spot Flying Chicken having a sneaky peek from above.


A Pre Schools Champs message from the HC
It's almost the Schools again and I don't know about anyone else but I'm feeling a bit nervous so.. Time for an amazing good luck picture, sort of related to chickens... Well I said sort of related... its got feathers!

Image from http://cabbagesofdoom.blogspot.com/2012/07/good-luck-jparcoeur.html

CompassSport Trophy heat: High Rigg
15th March 2015


Lots happened today. It was the annual compasssport trophy heats and for once we were making a halfway decent effort. In previous years barely anyone has turned up and those that do are under strict instructions not to do too well because the finals are somewhere inconvenient. This year however, the finals are at Helsington Barrows which is near Kendal - not too far away for once. Also, as we entered in the Northern England heat because it is nearer, there is less competition AND because SROC is in our category and they did really well last year so if they come first the club that comes second also qualifies. Furthermore, lots of people (compared with the previous turnouts, anyway) decided to come this year.
We were giving a lift to Supersonic Chicken today so we ended up walking to the start together. We got there really early. It was also really cold (and windy). We ended up huddling on the out-of-the-wind side of a hill along with DeNile Chicken and someone from another club. The person from another club was puzzled as to where in the world Solway Orienteers is located (isn't everyone?) and was obviously thinking we were invading WCOC (the club on the other side of the Solway Firth). They then said something about headless chickens like it was a bad thing to be one (they were completely oblivious to my real identity). Supersonic Chicken, DeNile Chicken and I then all looked at each other thinking "should we tell them?"
After all that we went and hung around at the start. There are several types of start. Today's was one with a long walk on the way there with a few hills, which is all good because a long walk may be tiring but it means you don't have to handle going through it on your course. However, it's pretty evil to make people walk a long way to the start just to stick it at the BOTTOM of the biggest, steepest hill in the area. (Well actually its evil without the long walk there too, but the journey there means I have more grounds to whinge) It took me so long to get up that hill - nearly 10 minutes! Although halfway up I got distracted by a yellow helicopter flying around the area. It actually came really close to where I was standing before disappearing around the side of the hill.
My course was split into two separate parts - the mega hilly bit above the road, and the still hilly but flatter bit below the road. In the shorter, first half its safe to say I wasn't going particularly fast - the terrain was mostly uphill and the little downhill that there was, was a bit on the steep side. However, I didn't see much of the top bit of the map and there were probably nicer parts to it. I got on with the lower part a lot better - although, looking back I really wonder how I didn't get horribly lost. When I was entering the second area I ran past a couple of other juniors from Solway and I didn't even realise who it was until they attempted to say hello. I tried to say hi back but all that came out was something like "Heeeh"
Several controls later and I heard someone coming up behind me. As they passed I realised it was Chem Chicken and as he left me in a trail of metaphorical dust he said something. Unfortunately I couldn't quite figure out what. It had sounded initially like he said "Hey, boring" but I thought it was unlikely Chem Chicken would say something like that out of the blue. My next guess was "Keep going" which made more sense given the situation but I still wasn't entirely sure it wasn't a third option. After a LOT of running - my feet are tired - I finally finished. Quite a few Solway people were waiting at the finish for everyone else to come in and sure enough Chem Chicken was there. I asked him what he actually said and it turned out he'd just said hello. I can't get my head round how my brain transformed it into all that other stuff. (Those of you thinking the HC has finally lost it are probably right) I've just had a look at the results and I think it's safe to say we won't be going to Helsington Barrows - we came fourth in the small clubs category ... out of four. Oh well, maybe next time?
By the way, I've got a photo to put on. This sign was on the way to the parking today and we thought it was pretty funny. Someone has finally realised that orienteers are to be feared!

Gullane dunes
8th March 2015


It's been a while, Gullane dunes! I wrote my very first ever post about this place and haven't been back since. Until now... Today was one of those days where you hang around for ages getting frozen and when you start you almost immediately start overheating. Gullane is different from a lot of other sand dune areas I've been to in that it isn't that forested and it is actually unusually close to the sea. Normally at Gullane you stick firmly to the right side of the map but today I got to see a little of the left hand side. (Some of the longer courses even had a control that got cut off at high tide, which sounds pretty serious but high tide was way after the courses closed) I started in the same minute as my Uncle (who as yet doesn't have a chicken codename - I'm open for suggestions!), he was running the blue and was a little concerned about the whole tidal control thing.
Once I'd started I quickly realised that although sand dunes are great areas for orienteering, they are very tiring *sigh* and the undergrowth can be EVIL (but when is it not?!). This event was a biggie (a SOL to be precise) so there were LOADS of those dead keen, slightly intimidating orienteers from way up north dashing around. I was going through a really narrow bit between two dunes when one of these super speedy people came up behind me really fast. There was no space to step aside but if I didn't move I was going to be chicken road kill, not good. I ended up jumping up onto a slight bank edging the path so they could get past. Once they'd passed I got back down and dibbed the control which had been just off the path at the end of the narrow bit. However, my course took me back at this point and the speedy person who I'd dodged on my way down was also going back through the bottleneck. I had to try and run up the sandy path (it was that kind of sand you get at the top of beaches and is really difficult to run through), uphill, being chased down by a person much faster than me. Scary! I reached the end of the narrow bit just in time and ended belly flopping onto the verge to get out the way. Things calmed down a bit after that, sort of. I somehow managed to convince myself at one point to crawl through a thorny bush, thinking that it would be a quicker way to the control. Thinking about this now, I realise it definitely isn't in my top 10 smartest route choices - it probably doesn't make the top 100 either - primarily because I was wearing my ultra-new Solway Junior Squad top (it doesn't look so new now) and also because I almost got stuck. When I got out of the bush, there were quite a few other orienteers looking at me with puzzled faces, obviously wondering if I'd been out in the sun too long. (They were probably right in thinking that)

Febuary

Heathhall Wood
28th Febuary 2015


Today was one of those days - prelims have just finished, the HC had just been dragged out of her bed - so I wasn't at my most energetic. Also heathhall is quite a difficult area to get a green out of so I decided to chicken out and do the orange. The HCy wanted me to go round with her but I decided to set her off a couple minutes before me and if she was a slowcoach I would catch her So when I started I was trying to catch the HCy so I was going pretty fast - compared to my normal orienteering speed that is. The first control went fine, I located the area the second was in and was closing in on it when ...

1. Which of the following happened?
(a) A giant VEGETABLE started chasing the HC and she fell in a big hole in the ground
(b) The HC was transported to a parallel universe ruled over by a dragon king.
(c) She fell over in some dog poo.

Unfortunately it was (c) that actually happened, though is it just me or does (b) sound really fun? Those of you convinced by option (a) I have something to ask you: WHY would a decent human being wish that on someone? (unless they were part rabbit) I apologize for the multichoice question just then, I'm still in prelim mode. *HC shudders* Well now I'm over that, let's continue...

2. When did the HC catch up with the HCy?
(a) She didn't. The HCy was eaten by a giant VEGETABLE.
(b) The HC is currently stuck in a parallel universe and may have a few problems catching up with the HCy.
(c) She caught up with the HCy at the third control.

OK, I think things are getting a little improbable again - although at times it would be nice if something ate my sister, though don't tell her I said that. Anyway, what's with all these weird questions popping up? Have I been hacked by my darling sister again? (if you are reading this HCy, I really didn't mean those comments about stuff eating you, honest!) Well nothing else really happened on the rest of the course except from every few minutes the HC heard the call of the irritating little sister ("Hey, HC! Come look at this!!) When we finally finished we found Indiana Chicken at the finish. The HC thinks that Indianna Chicken has been off on some top secret mission to save the world from evil masterminds misusing ancient artifacts or something because we haven't seen him for ages.

Scottish Sprint Championships - Erskine (St Anne's)
14th Febuary 2015


Its not that long since I turned 16 so I haven't run many proper urban courses because of the stupid insurance stuff. I have done some proper urban courses since my birthday but they were completely different to Erskine. I also once went round an urban course with my Mum - it was the BEST course I have ever done while being shadowed because we came to this river and the quickest way to the control was to wade along it so that's what we did! So basically I thought I knew what Erskine would be like but really I hadn't a clue. When I picked up my map at the start I almost imploded at how complicated my course was. Once I'd gotten accustomed to the map though, it was really fun. It was all on a hill, steep enough to be noticeable but not so steep that it became a pain. However there were a lot of steps and by a lot I mean LOADS, they were everywhere! Through trial and error I found the best way to go down the steps was to jump down which was pretty exciting. (It wasn't so great the next day when I was all sore, though) I saw a cat on my run and I almost stopped to give it a scritch but it didn't look very pleased to see me. In fact it turns out the HCy saw a cat going by a similar description. I'm not suprised it was looking pretty traumatised! Also I was talking to Speedy Chicken and she told me she almost tripped over a cat launching a sneak attack. Wow! A double whammy! I almost forgot to say but I was running the open course today - for those of you choking on your tea or coffee or whatever at the thought of the HC running in the open category I'm not kidding - I was running up as a W18 which meant doing the longest course. There happened to not be very much competition in my category (in other words there were no other W18s) so I was in the unusual position of having to attend a prize giving - normally we don't go as it just makes you feel gloomy but this time both the HCy and I won something. Weird right?!

January

Mabie Forest
24th January 2015


The roads and paths were covered in sheet ice today so we had to do the penguin walk when crossing them. The HC decided to take a risk and do the green although it was a bit on the long side for my chickeny legs. My course was in the higher up section of the hill and in the open felled area the frost was so thick it was a bit like snow! The HC has a slight thing for snow - its just so amazing! The snow / frost made getting across the machinery tracks and fallen trees in the open area really fun, unfortunately the rest of the forest wasn't snowy *HC looks up at the sky disapprovingly* Despite the lack of snow the HC still enjoyed herself on the rest of the course. I ended up running the last few legs with my Mum until we took separate routechoices for one control. I took significantly longer to get to the area the control was in and then couldn't find the control. I spotted my Mum running off in the distance and in an uncharacteristically competitive moment the HC decided to try and beat her - right before falling in a hidden pit full of leaves. I know, everything I do must be done with impecable style, right? So once I'd found the control, I headed off after my Mum at the fastest speed the HC could do. In the end I beat by Mum by 6 seconds *mu ha ha ha!* because she started before me. Now I shall leave you all with a picture of the HC's reaction to snow... Chicken out!


Mabie Knoll Bagging
2nd January 2015


This year's knoll bagging was really different from normal as usually the planner picks a couple of areas in which they stick a cane at the top of every knoll but this year, the controls were all on knolls but it was set up more like a standard score. Loads of people came this year, but hardly any from Solway! My Mum says I'm not allowed to ask you where you were but really, where was everyone? *Long silence* Well I suppose I should get back on topic, I was going round with the HCy again - I just don't learn, do I? The controls could be divided into two types, the majority of them were up the hill in a big cluster and the remaining few were scattered about lower down. We decided on just leaving the higher up controls alone and focus on getting all the lower down controls. Not long into our brilliant plan, we had a bit of a problem - we couldn't find the control. The area we were in is one of the parts of Mabie I have had a few... disagreements with in the past and this time was no exception. We ended up paddling through brambles and being smothered by thick Christmas trees. The HCy couldn't stand up to the plant's attack and was tripped up and fell in the spikeys - ouch. Once we'd got through that we kept on going until several controls later when I was chatting to my sister while trying to get through a pile of brashings. I'm not known for my skill at multitasking for a reason and ended up diving in the mess of sticks and brambles. The HCy actually sounded worried - I bet it was all an act and really she was laughing inside. *hears creepy laugh and jumps* So, so far in plants vs ckickens it was 2, nil - but there was still a couple of controls to go and it was all to um... get past? We were almost there when the HCy, trying to keep up with the ever-so-fast HC, was smacked full in the face with a springy branch. Now that was a low blow from the plants. Grr. Despite losing to the plants 3, 0 we still finished on time with 8 minutes to spare. Suck on that you weeds! - oh wait, they don't have mouths, oops.

The HC's Review of Last Year's Resolutions
Er... What were last year's resolutions? Um... What a pain, I can't remember. Oh no! The HCy is coming! *Tries to hide*
Honestly HC! Do you really need me to help you remember everything?! OK, looks like I'll help you just this once.
I never said I wanted your help anyway! *sigh* Sometimes conversations with you can be really one-sided...
OK! First up is be a Headless Chicken in another country!
Done, we went to Canada and as for being a Headless Chicken, I had to ask for help from YOU!!
What are you saying about my navigation? My navigation is perfectly good, thank you very much. So second is don't take bearings on white rocks that turn out to be fluffy and have legs.
Check, I still've managed to avoid that. Next?
OK the next one is to keep on writing your blog. *looks at HC accusingly*
OK, OK! Don't look at me like that! I may have taken a long time to update and I might have had to miss out several - OK a lot - of entries, but I'm still writing, just slowly...
You keep on telling yourself that, dodo. Last is to use a thumb compass.
Yeah well, you've got to leave an area of improvement somewhere and who you calling a dodo, I'm a CHICKEN, you dodo!
Well a chicken ain't much better!
You're a chicken too!!
Humph, well now you're finished that, I'm leaving. Headless Chicky OUT!
Phew! She's gone. I almost forgot to say but the HC's only resolutions this year will be to use a thumb compass - we all know the likelihood of this ever happening is a bit slim - and to keep on writing - hopefully.

December

Whittas Park
13th December 2014


Another score event. Another course with the HCy. Another ordinary score event - wait no, that's not right, score that last bit out because stuff did happen today. We were almost at our chosen first control when the HCy pointed out something lying at the side of the elephant track. It was a rather large mouse/vole/other smallish rodent and it was fast asleep out in the open. For a while we just stood there to let the situation sink in, then I tried poking the mouse to wake it up. No response. In the end we ended up picking up the mouse and putting it in a hole between some rocks so it wouldn't get stepped on. The rest of the course was more normal but seeing that mouse was amazing!

Pits n' Bumps - Barhill Plantation
13th December 2014


Its that time of the year again, most people are busy worrying about Christmas presents or what they'll wear to the dance but us orienteers have other things to keep us occupied - such as the many score events coming up. There's the Mabie Knoll Bagging at new year, Whittas Park after Christmas and the Barhill Pits n' Bumps before school ends. I am really NOT a fan of score events so this is quite a stressful time of year for me but the score that I like best is this one. I formed a team with the HCy again. For once I managed to keep track of where we were as normally when we enter the sections containing lots of controls we just go crazy and inevitably miss some. We got more controls than last year (OK, one more) and we got back nine minutes early, much to my Dad's annoyance as if we'd gotten a couple more we'd have done substantially better. Oh well, too late now. There's always next year.

Lowry Hill Urban
6th December 2014


Today only my Dad and I went to the event because the HCy was going to a PARTY!! - How dare she? Anyway, this was my first unsupervised urban event where I had to cross a proper ROAD!!! *dun dun dun!* Up until now I've been too young to be trusted to cross a road without killing myself/other people in the process which I think is stupid as I'm not THAT birdbrained! So everything had been going mostly to plan when I came to number 9. Number 9 was in a wooded area with very few ways in. I decided to go up this road and take one of the footpaths connecting the road to the wood. Unfortunately the footpaths were a back route to people's gardens that didn't connect with the wood and the road turned out to be a cul de sac. Oops. So when I'd confirmed that I'd walked all the way in just to walk all the way out, I left the dead end and took a looong detour to find the next possible way in. That took ages and by that point I'd decided to take the shorter version of my course that involved skipping the last few controls. The funny thing about Lowry hill is despite it having hill in its name there are about two contours in the whole area!

November

Cally Woods
22nd November 2014


Another chickeny run today. *Bleh* Sometimes chickeny runs are really fun but then there's the times they aren't so great. This was one of the not so great times. I had this control where there was a large walled area in the way. The best route I could see was skirting around the walled area to one side so I headed off in what I thought was the right direction. Unfortunately it wasn't and I ended up with the walled area straight in front of me and guess what? There was a gate in it. I checked to see if it was out of bounds and it was fine so I thought let's go through there! (In hindsight this wasn't a particularly good idea) It started off all right, but then the undergrowth got thicker and it got very quiet and kinda creepy. I went past a bowling green which doesn't sound so odd until you remember I was in the middle of a forest and there were no paths in that area. The bowling green was pretty well looked after for such an isolated place. Then I went past what looked a bit like those WWII concrete bunkers that are half buried in the ground although why there would be one there is a mystery. Also there were non-native trees randomly dotted around all over the place. After a lot of clambering through rhododendrons and freaking myself out I came to some open land on one side of which was a walled garden, complete with huge greenhouse. But really?!! - a walled garden inside a walled enclosure!? Before I could find anything weirder - I bet there was a dragon hiding in that place somewhere - I found a way out but it was still a pretty strange experience. After that little incident I had to rush off to Dumfries to meet up with my friends to go ice skating *eek!* - I'm hopeless at skating and it's kinda scary when people move unexpectedly. Needless to say I fell over a lot *rubs head*

Drumlanrig Woods
1st November 2014


This event was a funny mixture of *yay!* and *nooooo!!!* I had a pretty bad start as I found the first control no problem but misread the number and went off to look for it who knows where. Eventually I ended up relocating and going back in - finding the control again but according to me it was still the wrong number and I was about to go wandering off into the wilderness again when I was stopped by another orienteer who thought I hadn't seen the control and asked me if I was looking for number whatever and I said yes. He then pointed back at the control which was just visible over the undergrowth and ran off, leaving me making an I-knew-that face. After that things got better as I discovered its really fun running through thick forests that would otherwise be scary. Dodging all the branches makes me feel like a ninja. A slow, slightly bird-brained, feathery ninja but still a ninja. So it was all going really well for several controls but then it went badly wrong again - doesn't it always? I was jumping over a ditch and got the landing wrong. The demon ankle strikes again! After that I had to slow down a bit so the rest of the course took ages and on the way to the finish I managed to bash my foot *owie* This might sound like a catalogue of ways the HC has hurt herself but I just told you about that bit so the next part makes sense. I was walking back and chatting to someone about how things had gone and I mentioned to them that I'd hit my foot and I had a feeling I'd broken a toenail. They were very sympathetic - at the time I thought this was a little OTT for just a broken toenail that might just be bruised but I didn't really think about it. It turned out a while later that they had misheard what I said and thought I'd said I'd broken my toe. It was quite awkward sorting that out. And the toenail that caused the whole thing? It wasn't even a proper bruise let alone a full-blown broken nail!


October



Day 1: Edinburgh Castle
11th October 2014

Today was a little... surreal to say the least. My course started pretty normally in prince's street gardens and took us up the hill and out onto the royal mile. As it was a Saturday, the royal mile was packed and that's where things got kinda odd. First I saw a guy without a head - don't worry for my sanity, they were wearing an extra tall shirt and had suspended their hat and glasses from wire so they weren't actually headless (probably). Then I ran past some people in full Braveheart gear when I thought things couldn't get any weirder, I spotted R2-D2 and Chewbacca from Star Wars. At this point I was pretty sure I was imagining things as I'm quite a big Star Wars fan. However, then I just about ran into the HCy's Head teacher - who also taught me when I was an ikkle Primary 2. Which when you consider it is a really odd coincidence that we were both at that exact spot at that precise time... hmm, suspicious. I don't know what she thought I was doing, running like a maniac up the royal mile, dodging tourists and trying to read a crumpled map, but she only had time to look slightly concerned before we had passed each other and in crowds like that there's no going back to check up on people. I really hope she figured out there was an orienteering event on and that I'm not still running the streets of Edinburgh being chased by someone or something.
Oh! I almost forgot to say! We got our free rtc (race the castles) t-shirts today. There was a sizing upset so anyone found wearing a top that fits may get some irritated looks. Everyone in my family can just about get into theirs except from me - it makes a nice hat! Seriously, I'm not kidding, I can't get it on any further than my neck!


Day 2: Stirling Castle
12th October 2014

We got to go inside Stirling Castle! *blows raspberry* All the courses started at the very top of the hill, just outside the castle, and straight away we were taken into castle itself. For a castle maniac like me, this was just too good to be true - two of my obsessions combined! I've been to Edinburgh Castle on a school trip and it was a bit of a let down to be honest - I like my castles mostly untamed and crumbly round the edges, thanks - but I'd never been to Stirling Castle before. Orienteering there was confusing but also really a-MAZE-ing (get it?). I took a lot of wrong turns and almost ended up in a couple of places I wasn't meant to go. If anyone at Stirling Castle is reading this, sorry! At one point I spent AGES looking for this control absolutely EVERYWHERE! And guess what? It was on the gatehouse roof! *bleh* So yeah, I was showing off all my chickeny talents to the full. The rest of the course was kinda meh - although my opinion of this part may or may not be coloured by some bruised toes, don't ask (my lack of coordination will be my downfall!) but the castle part was great! *Drool*




Day 3: Balmoral Castle
18th October 2014

Today's event wasn't actually right next to the castle, it was in the big wooded area that's part of the estate. Now I have a sneaking suspicion that that Balmoral is one of those areas that divides orienteers in their opinions between "Balmoral is so AMAZING!!" and "never again!" I belong to the never again camp - the HC has funny ankles that disagree spectacularly with rocky areas - let's just say a lot of my time was spent falling over. Also, there are certain similarities between Balmoral and Craig a' Barns in that if you have a kinda vague, roundabout way of finding controls, like me, you are DOOMED! I got lost numerous times which was pretty annoying and on one occasion I got so turned around that the only reason I found the control at all was that I spotted a kite and went over to investigate if I could use it to relocate. Although the getting lost got a bit annoying, it was the rocky ground that really wound me up. It wasn't just me that fell foul of the area, the HCy also had difficulties. I found her wandering around in the middle of nowhere, looking a little lost and wondering where the path was. I took her back to the path and after that we just kept on meeting each other. We eventually ended up racing each other on the run in. Don't ask who won - its highly confidential. *Humph* After the orienteering we went to go have a look at the castle and ended up looking through the windows, wondering what it was like inside. I know, naughty HC, but sometimes its too hard to resist just having a peek.

Day 4: Sands of Forvie
19th October 2014

I'm writing this in January (I somehow managed to completely forget the existence of this event and only remembered when my Mum enquired about why I didn't write anything for Forvie. Well here it is! Before we went to Forvie, my Dad told me all about how it was an area of HUGE sand dunes - HC imagines Sahara desert and camels trekking over the dunes while orienteers ride on their backs, looking confused. Reality turned out to not be quite like my daydream. Forvie is kinda flat with big lumps of complex dunes sticking out. Also, the whole place is covered in either heather, long grass or lichen - there's barely a grain of sand visible and not a single camel in the whole place. Although this sounds awfully disappointing, Forvie - in complete contrast to Balmoral - went pretty well for me because normally when I see sand dunes, I really don't have a clue what bit is what on the map but in Forvie everything looked just how I imagined it! (I still managed to mess up a couple of times, though) I probably would have done quite well at Forvie if it hadn't been right after Balmoral and I wasn't so tired - I'll keep telling myself that!

Maxwellton Estate
4th October 2014


Well today was kinda fun but also kinda not fun. I normally don't get on too well with Maxwellton but this time things went surprisingly smoothly! The thing about Maxwellton is that to get a decent course out of the area requires going up and down a rather large hill (the whole area is on a slope) which makes orienteering quite exhausting. Anyway, so I went round my course and it took a long time, and when I got back I was hungry so I'd eat my lunch. So while I was eating this wasp decided to be disruptive and go crawling all over my back. I mean really?! - A wasp in October!! Now of course the last thing you do when being harassed by a wasp is show fear or run away - although I'm not sure most people know that - so I stayed very still and waited for it to go away. Eventually I had to run about in a few circles to shake it off - which was a bit scary as it's hard to run and watch stingy insects at the same time - and then I went back to my lunch. However, a few minutes later the wasp decided to come back and be a pest again. This time it landed on my face and tried to go in my ear. I wasn't particularly overjoyed by this and in the end my Mum had to tempt it away with some yoghurt while I made a bee-line for the car.


September

Junior Inter Area Relays: Falkirk Wheel
13th September 2014


It's that time of the year again. Normally at the relay event it's just the junior teams but this time the Inter Club Relays were happening too. The Headless Chicky wasn't needed this year for the junior relays as the numbers weren't right so she was part of our club's eight person relay team. Grrr... me jelly! I was sort of in charge of my team which was not so good as I kept on losing them and running around in circles, trying to find them. Then while we were waiting to start there was nothing to do except talk to people. Unfortunately I'm considered kinda weird by people my age - and they're right! - but it would be nice if they didn't think weirdness was contagious. So anyway, my team wasn't one of the fastest so by the time I'd started (I was running the 3rd leg) some people had finished. Meh. I got to my first control when a large pack of 3rd leg runners sped past - but didn't punch the control. I thought it must be an extreme case of gaffling but later it turned out they had been heading for the finish! So after a bit of walking about in circles and 180 degree errors I got to this parkish bit of land and found a Roman Legionary lecturing some tourists. I may have been slightly dehydrated at the time but I wasn't hallucinating! The Roman guy was someone doing a re-enactment - the Antonine Wall passes through the area so it isn't as random as it seems. So I ran past the legionary, found the appropriate controls and started to go back past the group when the Roman starts trying to sound tough while yelling 1 - 5 in Latin, which is more difficult than it sounds since 5 is something like squinkos. It was also difficult to keep a straight face! Needless to say, I was last back for the junior relays by quite a margin!
For those who don't know how an 8 person relay works (eg me a short while ago) I shall explain!


Junior Inter Area Individuals: Craig a' Barns
7th September 2014


Well, let's just say this wasn't one of my best runs ever. For those who've been to Craig a' Barns you'll understand when I say it is a very exhausting place. When you first spot the area when you get near the event you think "please tell me we're not going there!" The place is like a mountain! I've been to this area once before for a JK a couple of years ago but that time I was only on the lower parts. This time the start was right up at the top! By the time we got to the start I was ready to keel over and have a nap. After I started, I quickly discovered that finding anything in this area took a while - or didn't happen at all. The HC got a little worried after a while that there was only three hours left before the courses closed - by then walking had become the fastest way of getting around and I had only visited about half the controls. In the end I took nearly three hours - an almost legendary time! And by the time I got back just about everyone had gone.


Dalbeattie Town Wood Open Area
6th September 2014


I didn't run today as I don't get on very well with this area and my dad was running the event so I got roped in with helping with entries and stuff. I did collect some controls in though, and it was quite eventful! I was on my way back when I decided to take a route that led through the MARSH OF NO RETURN *dun dun dun!* And then, when I was almost across, I found the DITCH OF ENDLESS DESCENT! *NOOOOOO* So I, the brave and feathery Headless Chicken threw across the controls I'd so valiantly collected and readied myself for the jump... I was just about to chicken out and find a better place to cross when a vicious arachnid of monstrous proportions appeared on my t-shirt. The brave HC was not scared. (but watching the second Hobbit film has made me just a little bit wary of unexpected spideys) In this instance, the sight of such a monster appearing so suddenly made the ever-brave headless chicken cheep like a day old chick and leap over the DITCH OF ENDLESS DESENT leaving the creature on the other side of the great rift.
NB: some liberties may have been taken in the telling of this tale.


August



Day 1: Middle distance
One Duck Lake
2nd August 2014
Someone please turn the heating down! Pretty please!! So far in Canada the weather has been like the sort of Scottish summer most people can only dream of (as in temperatures actually over 18 degrees AND it has been sunny every single day!) it's weird. I've already gotten mildly sunburnt a couple of times - and I was wearing sun cream most of the time. When we arrived in Whistler it was like jumping in an oven. Before setting off today we were looking at how long the courses were and feeling a bit sceptical - "a 2km course, really!?" but when we got out there it was easy to see why the courses were so short. It was really rough and there was a lot of smallish, steep hills. Also it was extra hot, 32 degrees! I've orienteered in snow and torrential rains and almost every weather form you can think of but I've never orienteered in such hot conditions and unfortunately the headless chicken has a melting point of about 19 Celsius - not good. We had to take the bus to our start and as we were making our way to the bus stop we saw a whole heap of rather... alterative people camped out in front of the Olympic rings. Now I'm aware that I can't really make any comments about being alternative but these people were alternative in a different way that involves lots of yoga, meditation, ect... It was a bit of a shock. We orienteers actually looked kinda normal! Anyway we were passing the Wanderlust festival when we spotted a pavilion full of what looked like giant butterfly pupa with people's legs sticking out. It was a little surreal at first but it turned out to be a yoga/exercise thingy that involved this sling suspended from the tent roof. So once we'd realised there wasn't a tent full of people-eating pupae we arrived at the bus stop to discover our transport was one of those banana yellow, rectangular school buses that you always see in films. I didn't think they actually existed so I spent about five minutes pinching myself to see if it was real.
I managed to get lost on the way to my first control - which is perfectly normal for me, but for once I had quite a bit of difficulty finding myself again. It was so bad I had I had to ask a passing Headless Chicky directions - Oh the shame!!! But despite being slightly embarrassed about it, it was very nice of her to help me out (just don't tell her I said that, I'll never hear the end of it!)
So I had a really bad run - I really dislike uphill run-ins - and I finally got back to discover that the event organisers are amazing! If you're really lucky in Britain you might get a cup of water. Might! Only a couple of clubs still provide water. However at this event they didn't just have water. There was watermelon and bagels and crisps and tonnes of blueberries! *HC looks happy* And even better, the price of getting all this was included in the entry fee! At this point it becomes clear that the HC is just a stomach on legs after orienteering.
*Om nom* Watermelon!
By the way this picture is of the refreshments tent with the flags of all the Canadian provinces above it.

Oh by the way. I've just found this picture of the assembly area and somewhere in the picture there is a Solway Orienteer. If you spot this you are probably amazing at Where's Wally! (picture belongs to Jeremy Gordon)


Day 2: Sprint
Whistler Village
3rd August 2014
The start times were a lot earlier today so it was nice and cool *sighs* - really it was just normal Scottish summer temperatures but it felt almost cold in comparison. I actually managed to RUN today - despite saying I wasn't going to, you've got to keep everyone on their toes! Whistler village is a very nice place for urban orienteering - not too many hills, the right level of complexity and a nice shortage of those dingy alleys where you half expect someone to jump out and knife you. Also Whistler is full if squirrels and chimpmunks which are SO fwuffy! *HC hugs a small fluffy rodent* So yeah, it was good. However the visiting yoga worshippers had also decided to have an early start. They'd set up camp not only by the Olympic rings but in a small circular square as well - yes I know that's a contradiction but I can't think of a better way to put it. Unfortunately for me, my route took me through that area and I was so bewildered by this unexpected sight I took a wrong turn and got lost, yoga fanatics one, orienteers nil. My luck took an even worse turn when I ended up in an area there everything looked roughly the same, lots of roundabouts and parkland with the odd building and nothing particularly distinctive. It took me quite some time to figure that one out. Meanwhile my Dad had reached the street yoga and he decided to treat it like any other obstacle and used the age old teaching: if you don't want to go round it, go through it. *facepalms* So anyway, once he'd gotten through that he was so disorientated he couldn't remember where he was going - another victory to yoga people. (What do you call people who do yoga anyway? I mean people who orienteer are orienteers, people who play football are footballers, so what do you call people who do yoga? Yogaeers? Maybe not.)

Day 2 continued: HPP fundraiser
Whistler Mountain
3rd August 2014
I know, I know two events in one day is a little teeny tiny bit too much, especially if you're orienteering the next day too, but it was just too hard to decide which event to go to. Anyway, we got given ski passes to get there that allowed you to go on all the gondolas and ski lifts *happy face* When the HC was little she went on an orienteering holiday to Zermatt in Switzerland. I didn't do very much orienteering and was pretty much constantly suffering from nosebleeds but I loved the trains and gondolas, but not the busses as they stopped every ten meters - and I'm not kidding. When we got to the top of Whistler Mountain it was really sunny and had that nice high-up-place-in-summer feeling. At the registration area we discovered this event had a sneaky twist. Before you went out you had to estimate what time you were going to take and then you had to try and go round in that time! There was only one course and no one was allowed to take any timing devices round with them. It was really hard to guess and I can't quite remember what I put down but it was something stupidly precise like 51 minutes, 41 seconds. I was originally thinking of saying 90 minutes but my dad convinced me that was a little bit on the long side for a 3km course. It was a very steep walk down to the start, which was Kinda near the snow-making reservoir. All the alpine flowers were out and it was all very tranquil - except from the orienteers rushing around and the occasional mountain biker zooming past. (The mountain bikers are all mad keen in Canada and in the summertime they congregate in Whistler. They take their bikes up the mountain in the ski lifts or gondolas and ride down at breakneck speed over all these huge ramps and jumps. *shudder* Now that is something I don't want to try - I mean there are extreme sports and then there's EXTREME sports. So we got to the start and first the HCy and my dad, then my mum set off. I went last as I dislike the pressure of anyone being behind me. When I started I immediately had to cross a mountain bike track and then I came to several huge boulders. It was a test to separate the regular people from the headless chickens: if you are a normal person you go round, if you're a slightly overenthusiastic orienteer with chickeny tendencies you go over. I discovered later on that it was actually easier to jump from one boulder to the next than to wade through the heather and other shrubby plants that grew virtually everywhere. I caught up with my mum at the first control and we sort of worked with each other for a few controls. We went down to the small stream exiting the snow-making reservoir and crossed it before going up the other side. When we got to the next control I decided to contour round the hillside, traversing a boulder field in the process whereas everyone else decided to drop back down to the track running round the edge of the reservoir. Their way was about five minutes quicker but I think my way was funner (and that's what really counts). When I finally got to the control, my dad and the HCy appeared behind me. I hadn't even been aware I'd overtaken them as they took a wrong turn on the way to the first control and my sister had hurt her ankle. The last few controls took me quite some time as they were mostly uphill so when I finally finished I took about 90 minutes. I was just a little bit annoyed at this. If I'd kept to my initial time I would have done a lot better. *grr* Oh well, it was well worth competing as afterwards we went on the peak 2 peak gondola which stretches between Whistler mountain and Blackcomb. It was a loooooong way down! We then took a ski lift back down. I'd never been on one before and it was AMAZING!! (It was also slightly scary but don't tell anyone I said that) Ski lifts are really quiet and you feel like you are magically floating above the ground. Also you have a better field of view than in a gondola and it isn't so stuffy. I could probably burble on about ski lifts for quite some time but I don't want to bore you. Here's a picture of the start instead.


Day 3: Long distance
Black Magic Forest, Blackcomb slopes
4th August 2014
Well today I was too tired really. It was probably something to do with the temperature STILL hovering about the mid thirties and I'd done quite a lot of orienteering over the past few days. Although I was a bit wiped out and was thinking this wasn't such a good idea, I told myself it was all worth it for the way we were getting to the start... we got to ride on a SKI LIFT!! *HC makes happy chicken noises* (So in this case the means justifies the end!) In case you're wondering, the start was quite a way up the mountain so the ski lift was the only realistic way to get there. The area was quite tricksy as the pistes were covered in all sorts of lovely plants - all my favourites were there: thistles, brambles, shrubs that like to trip you up - only nettles were missing. It was really steep so if you were brave enough to run, you had to slowly zig-zag down the slopes to avoid braining yourself. The foresty bits were very thick at the edges and full of fallen trees but despite all this it was all quite fun. Then things went downhill - in more ways than one - I decided to go down a narrow piste with a ski lift going up the middle. For some bizarre reason, there were several high-power sprinklers spraying water everywhere. This seems a bit random to me - it was partway up a mountain on a ski slope for goodness sake! So I was navigating through the sprinklers trying to prevent myself from having an uncalled for shower when I slipped on the muddy ground - the ground had become completely saturated with water from the sprinklers - and I fell on my butt on a rock. It was VERY SORE! Stinking rock! So I sat there for a while to recover and got all wet... grr sprinklers! Now everyone will be thinking all the drama is over but no! It gets worse! Several controls later I had a control at the bottom of a cliff - or so I thought (it didn't actually say that in the control descriptions!) So I went to the bottom of the cliff. No control. OK, so if I was still back in the UK it would have been at the bottom of the cliff but this was Canada (where the moose are!) so it was actually at the TOP of the cliff. This cliff was actually more like a very sheer sand bank and it was a very long way back around so I decided to climb back up. At this point it would have been great if someone had popped up and said "STOP RIGHT THERE, HC! You dropped your common sense again." then they could have handed me back my misplaced common sense, told me to take better care next time and disappeared in a puff of smoke while I took the sensible route to the control. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and I ended up climbing up the sand bank and almost falling in the process. It was very stressful. About this time the HCy was busy being just as stupid. She was travelling down the slope below a ski lift when someone in the ski lift, going up the mountain, warned her against continuing the route she was taking as there was a large drop ahead. She went to investigate and fell over the edge! Luckily it was a steep slope rather than a cliff so she came off in one piece. *phew*. This may sound very serious but I have an even worse misadventure to tell you about! I was climbing over a log when I got tangled up and my trousers RIPPED! *Noooooooo!* For the rest of my course I couldn't concentrate as I was distracted by the thought of facing my Mum's wrath over wrecking ANOTHER pair of orienteering trousers - earlier this year I fell down a hill and completely mangled the knees of my trousers at a training session. However when I got back I saw a guy missing half of one of his trouser legs and the other one was all ripped too!


July

Gelt Wood
19th July 2014

Mud! Mud! Glorious mud! Nothing quite like it for... sliding down hills- OW!
The weather at this event was pretty bad - understatement of the year! It chucked it down most of the time I was out and there were flies everywhere. Flies are one of my pet hates - it's a bit weird considering I like most winged insects - but I can't stand them, especially the buzzy ones. Also the area is covered in steep drops and cliffs and as it was raining heavily the slopes became unstable and muddy. I was my normal, slightly Headless Chickeny self and decided on the way to number two to take a "short cut" that involved a path going between the top of one cliff and the bottom of the next. Unfortunately said path soon began to turn into a mudslide which I had to scramble up as the path was too slippy to go back down. Straight after all that I made yet another stupid mistake I went the wrong way and ended up with cliffs in the way and had to go all the way back and round. By the time I was almost finished I was really tired and when I came to a really steep hill I sat down to try and control my descent. However the slope was very unstable and I ended up sledging down the hill on my butt. "Whheeeee!"

Mabie Forest
2nd July 2014

This event was different from the others in the summer series as it was made up of several different activities. There was micro-o (Where you have a grid of controls and you have to go to them in a certain order - it helps people learn to orientate their map properly), memory-o (I'm not very familiar with this activity and it is hard to explain but I will try. There are a number of controls out in the open and you have to find them and dib them in numerical order and you DON'T HAVE A MAP!! It's tricky - but I did come 2nd last at that) and finally there was "Mabie Madness" (I don't know for sure what this was as I didn't do this one). Pollo sin Cabeza and me were a bit wiped out after our last day of school for the summer *FREEEEEEDOM!!!!!* so we didn't do that much (though we went head to head on the micro-o and things got ridiculously competitive - Honestly, I won overall! It was two out of three!?) By the way Pollo sin Cabeza informed me that her name (which I thought meant "Headless Chicken" in Spanish) actually means "Chicken without head." I'll get you back Google translate. Just you wait!
I'm soooo happy it's the holidays. Normally I'm not too bothered but this year was extra crazy with exams and it being the first year of the new qualifications. AND I'm hopefully going to see How to train your dragon 2 tomorrow! I'm so excited...

June

Club sprint championships - Kirkcudbright
28th June 2014


This event sounds really serious doesn't it? Well actually it was really an activity to try and get more people to come orienteering at the Sport for all event in Kirkcudbright but it was also the club sprint championships to try and get members to come. My Mum even made trophies! (The golden compasses for fastest junior / senior and the puzzle mazes of DOOM for the fastest relay team) To make things even more interesting the courses went through a rather large maze before venturing out into the rest of Soaperie Gardens. It was very tricky.
Unfortunately barely any club members came so there was little competition for most of the prizes. The HCy and I won the relay category but we were the only relay team. *HC pulls a face* The non-orienteers on the other hand turned up in droves. There was an endless stream of curious children and slightly bemused parents. Pollo sin Cabeza's little cousin came along completely by accident and I didn't realise who it was for ages *facepalm* I had to take her round a couple of courses as she was struggling with the maze and lets just say she can run fast - I was left in a trail of dust. Every time she saw her control she would go flying across the park and I would have to sprint after her while yelling "Please just SLOW DOWN!" After being totally run into the ground it eventually dawned on me who I had been taking round and we then had one of those awkward "Are you so-and-so's little cousin? I knew I recognised you from somewhere!"

Corncockle Plantation and Spedlin's Flow
25th June 2014


I was taking the Pollo sin Cabeza around the short course when I came across the Headless Chicky. She was looking slightly dazed and after asking her what had happened it turned out that she had managed to brush up against a fence. Said fence happened to be electric. Silly HCy.

Dalbeattie open area
18th June 2014


Today I did the short course again with the Pollo Sin Cabeza. It was a score course which is quite unusual as Solway doesn't put on many. We caught up with my sister, the infamous Headless Chicky, quite early on and she decided to go round with us. Then we discovered a really muddy ditch. Unfortunately for the Pollo Sin Cabeza mud brings out the HCy's mischievous tendencies, transforming her from angelic pretty little princess to mud monster (and I will admit this happens to me too). This caused an all out mud war which was only stopped after we realised we had been mucking about for about five minutes.

Hills Wood
11th June 2014


My Dad was planning this event and all I can say is that sometimes he can be slightly evil *the HC hears a creepy laugh* Let's just say my course went over every big hill in the area - and Hills Wood does hills properly (It's in the name I suppose). I was quite far through my course when I came to an unexpected dip. My control was in a dip but when I looked around there was no control to be found - Sorry, that Room on the Broom reference just slipped out. There were quite a few orienteers hanging around already. Indiana Chicken, Chem Chicken and some newcomers were all wandering around looking very confused. The HC was a bit confused too but then she spotted Chem Chicken disappearing at speed over the edge of a hill. There was another dip in the ground hiding behind the first! The newcomers managed to figure it out but the HC saw Indiana Chicken running off in the wrong direction. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he saw some interesting treasure.

Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival
7th June 2014


This was a very busy event with chickens, penguins and ducks all making an appearance - I'll explain later.
A lot of the schools that came, turned up in force with their powers of intimidation turned to their maximum. As it was an inset day in Dumfries and Galloway the normal bribe of "Come to the dark side, you get a day off school!" didn't work and as a result the participants from the region could be counted on one hand. Not that this bothered the HC at all. (Get of your couches before you become potato shaped!)
So the HC realised the common tactic of turn up in all the gear and in numbers just wasn't going to be good enough to put the competition off. It was time to go extreme, penguin style! At primary school there was this song that we were taught - complete with accompanying actions. It's called the penguin song and it is - in my opinion - the best, weirdest way of warming up there is. In each verse a new action is added and by the end you end up doing sort-of star jumps while spinning around and nodding your head (and singing while sticking your tongue out if you're unlucky) *Ahh...* happy days. So anyway, the HC, the HCy and an innocent victim - if a strange chicken asks you to join in their warm up say no, you don't know what you're in for - did the penguin song and shell-shocked a bunch of primary kids in the process. *evil laugh*
Well I was doing pretty well on my course and it was all OK but then I went a bit Headless Chicken. I was on my way to control 7 when it all went wrong. It was a very long leg but the Headless Chicken knew egg-sactly (sorry) where she was. However I decided taking the easier path route was kinda boring so I came up with a solution - go straight through the nasty scrubby stuff directly to the control! In hindsight this probably wasn't one of my brightest ideas but my route choices are not always the best - in the past I have found myself being eaten by unexpected water features, tangled up in rhododendrons and once I picked a fight with a rather large gorse bush. So really, in the scale of all the other idiotic things I've done, this is nothing. Anyway, so I headed off into the deep dark woods, absolutely certain of my destination and what do I find but a fence end. "What is a fence doing here?" I asked myself. Then I peered round the end of the fence. There was a path. That was when I realised things had gone a bit pear-shaped. I looked at my map and tried to figure out where I'd gone wrong. The only place where the features matched the map was further down the very same path I'd not long left. Somehow I managed to travel in a big semi-circle without realising. This was the look on my face:

As you can see I wasn't a happy chicken.
So I bet you're wondering what I was on about with my comment about birds earlier. Well we've had penguins and chickens so now moving on to ducks. When we got back and had lunch we went for a walk and there were BABY DUCKIES!!! *Cough cough* pardon me, what I really mean is there were ducklings. I have to admit they were a bit cute - just a teeny tiny bit, don't get any ideas! Also, to make things even better there were cygnets! Whoever wrote the ugly duckling never looked at a cygnet properly! They're sooo fluffy!! So now I've got the cutesy moment over I shall leave you with this picture...

BAD HEADLESS CHICKEN! THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE DURING THE EXAM DIET OR WHEN I WAS TOO BUSY REVISING / GETTING USED TO MY NEW TIMETABLE SO THEY WEREN'T PUT ON AND NOW I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED AT THEM SO FOR NOW THEY SHALL HAVE TO REMAIN AS A LIST OF SHAME TO STOP ME FROM COMITTING A CRIME LIKE THIS AGAIN. (THOUGH I MAY TRY TO FIX THESE ENTRIES AT SOME TIME)

The Crichton
4th June 2014




May

Summer House Knott
3rd May 2014




April

Castlelaw
12th April 2014




March

Cream O' Galloway
29th March 2014


Dumfries and Galloway School Championships
Cream O' Galloway
28th March 2014


Deans and Dechmont Law
9th March 2014



February

Heathhall Wood
22nd February 2014


I can't really remember very much about this event because of the situation at school (first I had assignments to research for, then there were prelims and then it was exams!) I am actually writing this in June *whoops*

January

Barhill Plantation
25th January 2014


I didn't get a run today as I was the planner for most of the courses. I planned the orange, light green and green and my sister planned the white and yellow. The Headless Chicky was at a trumpet playing thing but I was helping out with registration and download. IN THE RAIN!!! It rained pretty much constantly - except from when it was hailing. Although the weather was awful a lot of people came which was suprising, and even more suprising was that most of the people that came weren't regular orienteers. I even managed to persuade a couple of my friends to come along! I would like to say thanks to all the people who went round my courses and didn't strangle me afterwards - I used a couple of butterfly loops. *heh heh*
The wet weather caused people a few problems. Some people's maps almost disintegrated (even though they were on waterproof paper) and for other people the ink they used to mark up their maps ran or faded. In one instance one person ended up navigating to the zero of the number 20 instead of the circle! Then they wondered why they couldn't find the control.



Miltonrigg Wood
18th January 2014

The Headless Chicky did her first orange today and she did really well. *grr* She also got round in just under half the time I took on the green. *double grr* I've never been to Miltonrigg before and it is quite a lot like Heathhall, except with more ditches. The green course was only 3km and normally that only happens if the area is very small or rough. In the end it was a bit of both: the area was quite small but it was hard work off the paths because of the ditches and the wet weather hadn't helped.



Barhill Plantation Pits n' Bumps
11th January 2014
(it should have taken place mid-December but was postponed because of high winds and A MONSOON
- I mean really?)

Well I think I can see pattern emerging here. The last couple events I have been to have been score events and I have gone round with my sister, the cunning Headless Chicky - evil mastermind and my temporary ally. Well this time we were in our home forest so we were out to win the adults course. *splutter, splutter, cough* We actually did quite well, coming third with 55 controls AND we didn't get too lost!

Mabie Knoll Bagging
2nd January 2014

Today I went to my first event of the new year. Some of you are probably saying "On the 2nd day of the year? Really HC!?" but the Mabie knoll bagging is a club tradition. It is a score event where you have an hour to try and punch as many controls as possible and all the controls are on knolls (small hills) or on hill tops and it is always in Mabie forest (though the exact area varies from year to year). I went round with Headless Chicky for the second event in a row and it was... interesting. Mabie is what you might call a bramble heaven (they are so bad that in some parts even experienced orienteers decide it would be smart to take long detours around the brambles instead of going through them - it tends to be a bit quicker and a lot more painless) but today I decided to just go for it and take the direct line to the controls. I was fine as I was wearing gaiters and they kept most the spikes out but my sister wasn't so she was not best pleased at my route choice - opps. Lately it has been raining LOADS. Christmas and boxing day were nice and sunny but before and after its just been one storm after another so even though Mabie is VERY hilly some of the paths were really flooded and me being a bit of a dodo I decided to go right through the middle of these huge, freezing cold puddles that just about reached my sister's knees. She wasn't a happy chicky. In the end we got 18 controls and despite the fact we took 57 minutes we were the first back!


The Headless Chicken’s New Year Resolutions
As it’s a New Year (and almost a year since I started my blog) I thought that maybe the Headless Chicken should have some New Year resolutions. After quite a bit of thinking here is what I came up with:

1.Be a Headless Chicken in another country. By another country I don’t mean England but depending on how the referendum goes I might fulfil this resolution by orienteering in Cumbria. Last time I orienteered abroad it didn’t go very well – it has been the only occasion, so far, that I have got irretrievably lost – but that was over five years ago now and I think I’m ready to try again.

2.Don’t take bearings on white rocks that turn out to be fluffy and have legs. I have heard it is very easy to do. You take a bearing, look up and in the distance you spot a white rock so you use it as a feature to run towards but then you realise it’s a sheep and it has been moving so you are no longer following your bearing. It has happened to even the best orienteers and I would prefer not to join the ranks of people that have been tricked by scheming sheep.

3.To keep on writing my blog. I might have just about finished my Duke of Edinburgh which was my initial excuse to start this blog but I’m planning on keeping going for a while yet.

4.Try out a thumb compass and find out the effect it has on headless chicken tendencies. My Mum and Dad are trying to get me to use a thumb compass or at least try it out and I’ve decided to have a go, just to see if it makes me more of a headless chicken or not.

I asked the Headless Chicky what her New Year resolutions are and she said: “My resolution is to take over the world before my eleventh birthday! Only Joking! It is actually to get up to orange standard.” But then she did an evil laugh so I’m not entirely sure…


December

Whittas Park
28th December 2013

This was a charity score event to raise money for the Great North Air Ambulance. I went round with my sister, the infamous Headless Chicky *DUN DUN DUN!* and I am amazed to say I lived to tell the tale - only joking, she's not that evil! So before we went round we came up with our great but terrible plan to beat all the opposition, if we ran fast enough. As it turned out it was really cold and windy up there so our plan for world dominati... winning the course failed as it was hard enough to get round at all, let alone win. Meh.

This is a picture of the area. The two people that have been circled are me and my sister. It's a looong way down.

Penrith Urban Event
7th December 2013

Today I went round shortly before the Headless Chicky so I was running hard to stay ahead. I overtook several people and got back ages before anyone else to discover she had got distracted by an encounter with a couple of CATS *gasp* and she was lucky to get back so soon. I came 6th out of 20 which I'm really pleased about. The orienteering was really good for urban as most urban events aren't very young people friendly as we aren't allowed out on a proper urban course till we are 16. Apparently I can get married the same year I can start crossing roads independently. *grr* The part of Penrith we were in was different though as it is both complex and friendly to people who can't cross roads yet.



November

Cally Woods
November 24th 2013

Today the Headless Chicky and Smarty Chicky were really hyper! I think they must have been at the jelly bean jam again. *Sigh* So by the time we got there they were really excited. They went round an orange with my Dad (The Not-so-headless Cockerel) and I went round the Light Green. My Mum (the Not-very-headless Hen) also went round the Lt Green and as she started before me I was trying to catch her. I did catch her and overtook her quite early on but then I had to try and stay ahead (Oh dear). Everything was going quite well until number nine near the end. I met someone having a headless chicken moment and we ended up a little off course. We did find the control in the end but it was a close thing as my Mum managed to catch up a bit. When we had finished (I came second because there was a GPS on my course) I went back to the car to find the HCy and Smarty Chicken were just as hyper as before! *Nooooo!* I just don't know how they do it. Oh no, here she comes now. Wait! No! Not the computer!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! HEH HEH HEH! HEADLESS CHICKY OUT!
Meh


October

Lanark
October 27th 2013

This event was the second event of the Tinto Twin. (We missed the night event as we were at Drumlanrig the day before and three events in two days is quite ambitious) This is probably a good time to warn you that start using Yoda speak I might. My sister's fault it is! Made an origami Yoda puppet I did, started this off it did. Bored we were, walking to the start. Tell you more I need not.

Time to stop it it is. Wait no! I mean it is time to stop it. *sigh* Anyway what I was really going to tell you about is a true tale of woe and er... tree roots. At New Lanark (the buildings in New Lanark are probably older than the ones in the other Lanark but oh well) there are a number of very steep banks. Unfortunately I decided to go down one of these slopes and when I got to the bottom there was an impassable wall. So I tried to go along the wall so I could find a way round but my way was blocked by a very nasty looking thorny bush. So then I decided to go back up the hill but I ended up taking a different route and got stuck because it was very steep and the slope kept on collapsing underneath me. Eventually I came to the path to find a vertical bank to climb up. Several tree roots later and looking like a very muddy mud monster I reached the top. My lesson? Never trust a hill - especially a steep one.

Drumlandrig Woods
October 26th 2013

I am very glad I decided to do the light green. I think the best way to put how I did is that I made a couple teeny ikkle mistakes. Not really worth talking about as they are so small. What do you mean Headless Chicky? Me, lie!? No, you must have the wrong person... Oh fine I'll tell the truth. As the HCy just said I made a couple of silly mistakes - if I tell you please don't laugh. The first one was that I almost went to the wrong control. The map looked a bit like this: So I was going to my number 2 and got a bit confused and ended up almost at 3 so I had to go back and get 2 then go to 3.
But it gets worse. Later on I decided to take a short cut through some forest "crawl" and ended up in the spookiest section of forest I have ever seen. It was really dark and the trees were really close together and there were all these spider webs everywhere. Now don't get me wrong - I like spideys in general but I can't stand the way the webs stick to you if you touch one. Yuck! So now I have somewhere to take the number 1 spot of my top-10-places-I-really-don't-want-to-go-orienteering-list (it’s even beaten fairy bog of doom - don't ask).

The Headless Chicken spreads her wings

The Da Vinci Decathlon 2013, Milan
October 3rd to 4th 2013


So I bet you're wondering what the da Vinci Decathlon is. Well it is a competition that was started up by Knox Grammar School in Australia a few years ago to test people in a range of different subjects (ten to be precise).

Sorry to all philosophers but it is a scary subject... Well I suppose I'd better get back on topic. So how on earth did the HC manage to get to go to Milan for half a week just before the mock exams? Well my school has connections *HC smiles knowingly* and recently we swapped geography teachers with Knox and because of this we got involved with the da Vinci Decathlon. I was in the team last year but we only competed via Skype. However, this year the competition took place outside Australia for the first time - in Milan - so we got to go.

Time: After school, Tuesday 1st October
Place: Outside the high school
So we loaded our cases in the back of the mini bus and set off for Edinburgh, where we stayed overnight in a premier inn really near the airport.

Time: Wednesday 2nd October
Place: Edinburgh Airport
After a really early start we went to Edinburgh airport to catch our flight. We got through security with about an hour to spare. While everyone else went and goggled over perfume and makeup I ended up watching the planes - makeup makes my feathers get all clogged up.It is several years since the headless chicken flew so her wings were a bit out of practice and she was slightly nervous. My concerns were unnecessary though as the flight went very smoothly. It was a sort of cloudy day but we got to see the Alps as we flew over them. Last time I saw the Alps was in 2006 when we went orienteering in Zermatt, a village by the Matterhorn, and I'd forgotten how pretty it was. *HC goes all soppy for a second* Right! Sentimental moment over now. So we landed at Malpensa Airport - excuse the fit of giggles, I was reading a book in which the main character was called Otto Malpense when we went so it seemed really funny that this was the name of the airport. We went through passport control and got on a bus waiting outside. Now don't get me wrong, I bet there are many lovely bus drivers out there but take my advice - if you get on an Italian bus NEVER pay too much attention to what the driver is doing, you will most likely be very scared. I am going to call this bus journey hair raising. It started with the driver leaving behind several people who had put their bags on the bus. There weren't many seats left so I ended up sitting next to an Italian lady who spent the entire journey ignoring me or glaring in my direction. Meanwhile the bus driver was driving like he'd gone crazy - with one hand he was holding his phone which he was yelling at as he was arguing with the people he'd left behind and the other hand was waving around in the air. He was steering with his knees!!!
We got off the bus at the Station Centrale and made our way across the square/drop off point/road network - it seemed to have multiple functions - to the Michelangelo hotel where we were staying for the decathlon. Nothing really happened from now till tea time where we joined the other schools. I ended up at a table with one of my team mates, lots of people from Sydney Girls School and one person from Woodleigh School (also in Australia). It turned out everyone had been on this thing called the Race around the Renaissance and had already been to Paris and lots of places in Italy. They had been going round museums and churches for about two weeks and after the decathlon they were going on to London for a few days.

Time: Thursday 3rd October
Place: Michelangelo Hotel, Milan
So first day of the decathlon and it began with three challenges on at the same time so we had to er.. Divide and [try] to conquer! The challenges we were trying to "conquer" were philosophy, English and maths (+ chess). I did maths
(I probably should have warned you that I am a bit of a geek) and it was really hard. There was all this stuff about i which stands for the square root of -1 ( is an abstract concept as it doesn't seem to exist - just try typing it into your calculator!). After we tried to get our heads round that, it was time for evil triangles and confusing fractions - and I thought ratios were hard! Once we had either answered the questions or given up - some of them we were never going to answer in a blue moon - we turned our attentions to helping the others. I was told to do a question about Lord of the Rings in the English challenge as I was one of the few people that had read the books (well some of them). After we handed our question papers in we had a break for a while and then it was the creative producers challenge. We had to make a minute long drama about the death of Leonardo da Vinci and make it look suspicious in some way. Ours involved poisonous drinks and apples - so what if we took our inspiration from Snow White... If you are curious here is a link to the video HERE. So after lunch it was back to work with the code breaking, science and art & poetry challenges. The science questions were all about the spread of diseases - especially cholera - so we were all a bit out our depths. I eventually ended up helping with the code breaking and discovered that one of the codes was actually quite simple! *gasp* It was one of those ones where a=26 b=25 c=24 d=... you get the picture, but the reason it hadn't been cracked was that they had put a "hint" that was a picture of one of the Percy Jackson books. It turned out the hint was about what the enciphered text said (humans see what they want to see) and not about breaking the code! Once the challenges were over we headed our separate ways to find something to eat and after that we headed back to the hotel for the symposium. This was where we had to present our views on what the best discovery of all time was and it was quite creepy how everyone seemed to have picked similar topics. Two teams did agriculture and another two did language, we did DNA but one of the Knox teams did particles and they talked about DNA a lot too.

Time: Friday 4th October
Place: Michelangelo Hotel, Milan
The second day of the decathlon started with a metro trip to the "National Museum of Science, Technology and Leonardo da Vinci" for the general knowledge round. The questions were all about the Renaissance and da Vinci's inventions / artwork. Once we had answered the questions as best we could we got to wander around the museum for the rest of the morning and look at the exhibits. I ended up spending a lot of time in the section on old fashioned clocks and then talking to some of the people from one of the Australian schools. Next we caught the metro back to the station centrale and went off to find lunch. After lunch we had the cartography and engineering challenges. I took part mostly in the engineering challenge where we had to build as big a bridge as possible from four straws and three sheets of paper. It was quite tough and most teams’ creations didn’t stand up – ours did. The cartography challenge was a series of questions that involved looking at maps and interpreting them or were about latitude and longitude.When this was finished we had a debate about the symposium and then we organised some entertainment in the form of a highland dancing competition for the other teams. *heh heh*It was extremely entertaining watching some of them while others were just a bit puzzling. We awarded towel kilts to the ‘winners’.Before we all went our separate ways for the night the results were revealed. Sydney girls were 1st with Knox years 10 and 9/8 in 2nd and 3rd respectively. After the decathlon was over we caught the Metro to go and see the Duomo (the big cathedral). However by the time we got there it had closed so we didn’t get to go in but even from the outside it was pretty impressive. We also went in the big shopping centre next-door and spent the next few minutes goggling at the place – me at the architecture and everyone else at the shops. Once we had finished looking amazed we went to an ice cream shop. It was amazing as well! It sold so many flavours of ice cream that if we had all had an ice cream with a couple of different flavours in each there still would be flavours left over which no one had tried. It was ice cream eater’s heaven – it tasted great too! *om nom nom!*

Time: Saturday 5th October
Place: Malpensa Airport
We left for the airport after saying goodbye to the other competitors. We arrived at the airport after a not-so-hairy bus journey. We were on the plane at 1.00 and then we flew home.
THE END?

The Scottish Junior Inter-regionals
Day 1 - Scolty
October 5th 2013

The Headless Chicky’s account
As I couldn’t compete on day 1 – I was on a plane at the time – I shall have to get my little spy to tell you about it…

Yes, spy is the right word as I had to travel up in the East team’s bus. They were monitoring me at all times to make sure I didn’t discover any sensitive information. I mean really, I would never do that. *heh heh heh* It was VERY long way and we played lots of card games. When we got to the event I met up with the rest of the West team and we got sorted into our relay teams. I ran yellow on the second leg and it was very hard. It was really easy to get lost and at one point I ended up working with a girl from another team. After the event we all got back in the busses (I was in the West one this time) and we went to the Aberdeen youth hostel. I eventually got bored waiting for my sister to arrive so I went and played football with the boys.

Day 2 - Wood of Easter Clune
October 6th 2013

Well this was some event! It was the first epic run I've had for ages (an epic is when you take longer than two hours to get round a course) and by the end I was so tired I wanted to cry. *HC sniffles* The terrain was quite rough but that wasn't what slowed me down...it was the blae berries! (Yum!) You should have seen the size of them, they were amazing! So once I managed to get away from the blae berries I managed to overshoot the control and I had to go back up a huge hill. *Nooooo!* And when I got to the top I had to find the control in a little depression thingy but I couldn't find the control. I tried to go down a small slope but it ate my foot! When I got my foot back I leaned against a tree and discovered it wasn't as sturdy as it looked. I panicked and tried to run away from the falling tree but I ran in the wrong direction and almost got squashed! (I think a career in the forestry industry is off limits now)


Also here is a picture of the West team. North won this year but we'll show them next time! (maybe) Anyway, the reason we are all laughing is that someone was doing the rabbit ears to the person taking photos and then someone snuck up behind them and was doing the bunny ears on him and it took them ages to realise!

September

Dalbeattie Town Wood
September 21st 2013

It was the first event of the season today and the weather was warm and sunny and the palm trees wafted gently in the breeze... What? You don't believe me? Well maybe that was a little white lie *looks outside at the pouring rain* but still the weather was great - really! - in a very scottish, rainy way.I only went round the light green today as I have a hockey injury from earlier in the week that involved people whacking my toes by accident *HC looks annoyed* so anyway, back on topic I won my course this time and headless chicky came second on the yellow course. When I came back I had to be a nurse as headless chicky and smarty chicken had decided to go exploring and had discovered a wasp's nest. I think you can guess what happened next.

You can hear more from the headless chicky HERE on my new page for the headless chicken's "friends" (some people blackmailed their way on).

August

The White Rose

Day 1 - Gilling Woods
August 24th 2013


Well this was one exciting weekend! We went down to york on Friday right after school and let me tell you that is a looong way when the Headless Chicky is tired. *grrr* Anyway we went and stayed with my uncle -he's not really my uncle but he's a sort of honoury one if you get my drift. The next day we went to Gilling woods which is one scary place. There are holly bushes everywhere and really thick, spooky forests -eek!- and even worse it was MUDDY! "Did I hear that right? I thought her motto was It's not real orienteering unless you get muddy" I hear you say. But seriously, that mud was scary! However, on the bright side I came first (out of two) as I was running up on W18S - I really need to do an explanation of age classes sometime. Oh, and they had a labrinth AND a string course at the event. For those of you that don't know a labrinth is when you put controls in a maze and you have a course round the maze. It can get very tricky.

Day 2 - er.. Gilling Woods (Again)
August 25th 2013


I've never been to a multiday event where the same area but different parts are used each day. It certainly was interesting although it must have taken skill to plan the longer courses so they didn't repeat themselves. I think EBORienteers did a really good job BUT (there's always a but somewhere) please don't make me go through those horsetails again. Pretty please.



I came first overall at the white rose. *Whooo Hooo!* I got given a cup... its blue and you can drink out of it -I bet you were imagining a huge trophy but personally I like my cup more.



July/August
The Scottish 6 days - Moray 2013

So here is is. The event we've all been waiting for (well... maybe not all of us). And it has finally arived!!! *everyone screams in terror...*
Ehem, sorry about that, you never know when one of those ultra-competitave orienteers will pop up. *sigh*
So now back to the 6 days. As I didn't have internet access where I was staying I made a paper record of all the crazy stuff that can only happen at the 6 days. But do not fear I have scanned all the stuff into the computer (at great personal expense may I add) so everyone can -if they want- read it.Ta da!



Here is a map sample from Lossie. It's scarry isn't it. I think I'm going to have nightmares!





Here is an aerial view of the day 2 assembly. Credit goes to Martin Ward for the picture - I only added the words.





My Mum asked me to do a comic about the 6 days for the club newsletter with a pannel for each day. I have decided not to use all of them here as I don't want to drag on too much but here is the pannel for day 3 and it is about those huge "sand dunes" (I think they were really mountains in disguise).









Almost done now so to celebrate I shall show you this picture of amazing artistic tallent - says she modestly.



What can I say? I was bored...

*

Sorry about the awful handwriting and speling and for being so late in posting this but I have been on holiday for two weeks and when I got back I just couldn't be bothered (it also had a lot to do with the recorded episodes of Doctor Who that I hadn't seen yet) but that, as they say, is another story. Night night.

July

Mabie Forest
July 3rd 2013

I didn't do much as I went round with Pollo sin Cabeza (by the way that's not her real name) on the white. It was the day after school ended after all. *yawn* When everyone had finished we had our annual club BBQ.



June

Dalbeattie Open Area

June 26th 2013

Well this event was exciting! We were out in the open fieldy bit behind the town wood and I was going to my third control when I came across a ditch. It was a rather large ditch and it looked quite deep. I wasn't planning to cross it as then I would have to cross back over further on but there was a wall of gorse in my way. The only practical route to take was to cross the ditch so I found a bit where it was narrower and leapt across. Unfortuately -as I discovered- the part of the bank I landed on was nothing but a grassy overhang, which broke when I landed. I then had an unexpected swim where the only way to get out was an undignified scramble up the bank. *HC looks embarassed*

Heathhall Wood
June 19th 2013

Now would probaly be a good time to introduce Indiana chicken - a member of the club that now studies archaeology but still comes orienteering occasionally. Anyway Indiana chicken and his dad put on the event this week and what a warm day it was to. This was my first time at Heathhall and it isn't very hard. Although it isn't very challenging navigationally it was really fun to run over as the ground is sort of bumpy and has lots of "waves" in it a bit like the sea.Let's just hope there are no sharks as well! P.S I came second!!! Finally a good result.

Hills Wood
June 12th 2013

Sometimes you can't help but wonder who named hills wood. I mean most of the area is open farmland at the top of a hill. I admitt you have to go through some woods to get there but why not call it hilly-sheep-farm-with-a-forest-in-front? Catchy, huh? I only went round the short course as it is the school 10 km on Friday *HC looks sad* and I didn't want to tire myself out.I was meant to be shadowing (following some distance behind) Headless Chicky and her friend (Smarty Chicken) but where's the fun in that? Instead I ended up overtaking them and showing them where they were meant to be going (they'd got lost while collecting bullet cartridges). *sigh*

The Crichton
June 5th 2013

Did you know they used to lock mentally unwell people up in the Crichton? No? Well they did. I bet you're wondering why I mentioned this. Hehehe... I'm not crazy! *Headless Chicken smiles creepily* Anyway, back on topic, there isn't much to say about the event. It was a lot like a lot of other events at the Crichton.

May


Day 1 - Craigengillan Estate (somewhere near Loch Doon)
May 25th 2013

Wow, it was warm. It has been a while since I’ve orienteered in moorland so it was...interesting. This was my first Craigengillan Estate experience and they have some very nice sundews (in case you’re wondering what I’m on about sundews are a type of really small, carnivorous plant that grows on boggy ground). Now don’t look at me like that, OK I’m obsessed - I admit it but still everyone has something they’re crazy about, don’t they? Oh and talking about obsessions, my wee sister (Headless Chicky) had to make a newspaper article for school. No prizes for guessing what it was about. Of course the account is slightly different from what really happened – I did NOT get stuck in a tree and hurt a wing – but I still think it is pretty good.

Day 2 - Maxwelton Estate
May 26th 2013

Ah, relays... The tense exciting waiting, the prospect of letting the team down and the horrible uphill starts - don't you just love them? This year I was in a team with my sister (headless chicky) and Supersonic Chicken (my assessor for D of E). Unfortunately we were non-competitive as Kerstin was standing in for the third member of our team, who couldn't make it due to car problems. Oh and did I tell you our team name was Solway Sphinxes?
WARNING! MAY CONTAIN REFERENCES TO THE HOW TRAIN YOUR DRAGON BOOKSYou might think this is weird but all the teams from EckO in our category were named after viking tribes in How to train your Dragon. There were: the Visithugs, the Beserks and the Hairy Hooligans. Also, in the category above there was the Bog burglars (strangely there was only one girl in this team) and the Hysterics.

Hackthorpe New Wood
May 11th 2013

So exams are over, the weekend has begun, now it's time to relax and unwind... by orienteering?! OK, so maybe my definition of chilling out is a bit odd but when you're given the chance to do a Norwegian-style map memory orienteering course you just have to go. "What on Earth is map memory?" I hear you ask.
Well, it is when you go round without a map -yes you heard me right- and at each control there is a small section of map with a couple of controls marked on it. You have to memorize where the control is and how you're going to get there.


April

Cream O' Galloway
April 27th 2013

What pops into your head when you think of Cream O' Galloway? Ice cream and adventure playgrounds of course!
What else? Uh..More ice cream.
And..? Even more ice cream...(triple scoop)
Oh I give up, this is hopeless *Headless Chicken looks frustrated* I thought Cream O' Galloway was famous for its orienteering courses. No? Well maybe it isn't yet but in the last few years this area has been used quite often for the regional school's champs and little else.
Anyway, I have begun in my quest to convert people I know into orienteers. One of my friends from school is doing Duke of Edinburgh and didn't know what to do for the physical section so I suggested they come orienteering. I made a picture on paint and you can see that I have way too much time on my hands...



Esthwaite Intake
April 13th 2013

Ah ha! Yippee!! I wasn't last! Victoreeee!
Sorry about that, got a bit carried away there... But the fact is I was 113th (ooh, the event was on the 13th. Spoooky!?) and there was 130 people on the green AND I got round in under 100 minutes.OK, maybe it wasn't the huge victory I was imagining but it's progress. Here's a picture of my course.


Burnbanks
April 7th 2013

Just back from the event and I'm knackered. Burnbanks is next to the huge Haweswater Reservoir in Cumbria. I ran a green today and it was very physical. I had a bit of a spoonhead moment (if you don't know what I'm on about watch the Doctor Who episode "the bells of Saint John") and ended up wandering around thinking *I don't know where I am. Where am I? I don't understand...* It was quite an adventure as it was still slightly snowy and I came last as I took a hundred and something minutes. I can quite safely say it was an "almost epic." (an epic takes 2 hours or longer)

Here is a picture of the area from the car park.

March

Solway Winter Series: Mabie Forest
March 23rd 2013

The event has been cancelled due to the heavy snow. It's so deep both the Primary AND Secondary schools were cancelled today (I wrote this on Friday) and my Dad couldn't get to work. At the moment there's about 6 inches of snow but the blizzard out there is showing no signs of stopping. It's supposed to snow on Saturday as well! If it keeps on like this we'll be snowed in!!!

March 31st 2013
Ok the snow is beginning to go now but when it was at its deepest is was about 2ft deep - yikes! There's too much snow for the headless chicken to go running (sinky sinky. squelch squelch) and it's bad for my feathers. *sulk* School is out for the Easter holidays now, so here are some pictures of the Headless Chicken in the snow!

Dumfries and Galloway School Championships

Barhill Plantation
March 15th 2013

The headless chicken strikes again! It was the regionals on Friday and this year my school actually entered a team!! I was so amazed as normally it is just me and one of the other girls in my year. This time 13 people came. And why? My brain washing program is finally working! *Heh Heh Heh* Well maybe not but it is a good idea. I am pleased I wasn't a loner this year but it was the most complicated event (in terms of transport and classes) ever. Normally my Mum takes us and we have our runs and hang around for the prize giving and then go back to school for last period. However my PE teacher was in charge this year so the set up was different, VERY different. I won't go into too much detail but there was a lot of going backwards and forwards.
Anyway I'm getting sidetracked AGAIN, I should be talking about how I did. I have to admit I was really nervous, we were on a tight schedule and I needed to win after coming 3rd last year. (not that I'm competitive or anything)Everything was going fine till just after number 6, when I saw someone on the same course as me. I got a bit of a shock. Despite that I lost them and didn't see anyone else on my course except Jonathan but I was kinda expecting him to overtake me (as he is a regular Orienteer and a member of Solway). So after we'd finished our courses we walked back to school. Nothing happened for over an hour and eventually I gave up waiting and went to the PE bit. They had just got the results and five minutes later we were at the prize giving.
So one of my friends came 2nd. The girls in my year were 2nd, 3rd, and 5th. (in case you were wondering I ran in the open category) The boys were 2nd, 7th, 10th, 11th, 19th and one miss punched. The seniors came 3rd and 4th.
And me? I was 1st (out of the girls) AND I got a huge trophy! *My precious! Gollum. Gollum...*


Duke of Edinburgh
Practice-for-the-practice Walk
March 10th 2013

I was doing a practice-for-the-practice walk for my D of E expedition I know it's technically not orienteering but oh well. We were doing some map reading so I'm sure it counts. We started outside the Primary School and walked through the Town Wood to Kippford. It doesn't sound very far but by the end I was pretty tired.
At one point the two teachers ,that were meant to find stragglers, got lost and the group leader had to give them directions over the phone. I have a feeling this isn't the first time that's happened.
Everything was fine on the walk except when we went the wrong way as the teacher had told us to go right and we needed to go left. I ended up directing the group as one of the three teachers was ahead, waiting for us at decision making points and the other two (the same pair who got lost) were several minutes behind us, making sure no one was trailing behind. Once we were back on track everything went smoothly. We had lunch near the edge of the wood and did some stuff about first aid. After that we set of again for Kippford.
It was fine until we went into the wood next to Kippford and Rockcliff. The maps we were using were O.S ones so they only showed the biggest paths.
Oh Dear.
Below is the map I was using with the route marked on it (in red) and an O map of some of the town wood.

Gullane Dunes SOL
March 3rd 2013

Wow! What to say?! We went to the event at Gullane Dunes in East Lothian on Sunday to practice for the 6 days and now I'm worried: if Gullane is this hard what's it going to be like up North?The Scottish 6 days is one of the biggest events in the UK, attracting 3000+ people and going on for, you guessed it, 6 days. It only happens every two years and this time it's in Moray.

4 out of the 6 areas are sand dunes and these are some of THE toughest dune areas about. Uh oh! Now you see why I need to practice.I've heard the horror stories about Lossie and Roseisle and that they're meant to be harder than just about everything else in the country. Oh and I managed to live up to my name as I got totally lost and took over twenty minutes to find a control.I don't normally take so long so my time is impressive for all the wrong reasons.

Although my run was pretty disastrous it isn't all bad. In the past when I've orienteered at Gullane there has been this huge hollow in the ground, which I call the crater of DOOM, that has always caused problems. One time the control went walkabout and another I just couldn't find it. However, this time I found the control! *Headless Chicken does a victory dance*