St Helens Come and Try Orienteering

Sunday, 10 August 2025

One of the goals of starting the St Helens Orienteering Club was to put on some small events for the locals to try orienteering and yesterday was our very first one. 

Getting to the day was quite a lot of work, I had to get permission from the council, organise the creation of a new map (thanks Mark) of the foreshore area, design (thanks Zali) and get banners made, sort out equipment and bring it all up to St Helens, plan and then try to promote the event so people actually showed up.  

Yesterday was a lovely day for it, but we were pretty unsure that anyone would actually show up.  Once we got the controls out and all our banners in the ground Jon and I sat back fully expecting to be spending the next 2 hours chatting amongst ourselves then packing everything up again.  However much to our delight, lots of family groups turn up and nearly everyone did both the courses we'd set, some kids running the 1k course multiple times. As always the electronic timing is a big hit. 

So all in all, a lot of work but ultimately a big success.  I'm not sure any of our customers will convert to regular orienteers, but I know they'll all think fondly about orienteering if they cross paths with it again.