Scottish Juniors Enjoy Training in the Lakes

Each year the Junior Regional Orienteering Squads (JROS) organise a training camp based at Hawkshead for M/W 16’s from across the country. A group from Scotland ventured down to join in the fun!

The camp is set up with each region taking responsibility for their juniors. In advance JROS selects training area, plans the exercises and hangs the kites – so each squad simply turns up with their own juniors and coaches and makes use of this fantastic set-up.  The entire Hawkshead Youth Hostel is taken over for the weekend allowing the important social aspect of junior orienteering. This was no mean feat for the organisers this year, trying to provide all the fun but minimising all the Covid risks and huge thanks to everyone who made the weekend happen.

Thanks to Roger Scrutton, Rona Lindsay, Jacquie Laird and Alan Bennett who agreed to coach, supervise and chauffeur, a group of Scottish juniors was able to join in the fun.  The Scottish Junior Squad had decided to extend the opportunity to keen orienteers who had not previously had the opportunity to attend JROS training camps, as they understand the importance of these opportunities in encouraging juniors to remain within the sport.

The juniors had a great time, training at Great Tower and Tarn Hows as well as a fun Night-O event in the grounds of the Youth Hostel.  Their comments were:-

“Thank you for inviting me to the camp, I loved it!”

“I really enjoyed the weekend! I loved the socializing, with both the other Scottish Juniors and the East Anglia Squad that we were sharing a room with. Getting to know the people that I’ve seen at events for ages was really fun.

The training was useful for allowing us to experience a whole different area in a whole different landscape, and the coaches really helpful and friendly, and the weather was pretty good considering how it could have been.

Great Tower Ridge was a fun area because it was so runnable and because of the variety with a lot more rock features than I was used to.

My highlight though was definitely the Night-O around the Youth Hostel. It was exhilarating to be running with all the different people, which seemed like chaos.”

“I really enjoyed the weekend at Hawkshead – it was so much fun!  I made new friends there and learnt some new orienteering skills.  My favourite exercise was the clock relay on the Sunday.  We had a small, circular course with some markers and we split into teams of two.  The first runner ran out to control one and left the marker there and then ran back to the start.  Then the second runner went out to the first control and moved the marker on to the next control and then ran back and swapped with the first runner.  We kept repeating this until we got to the end of the course where the last runner would run out and collect the marker.  I thought this activity was really good because it got me thinking about where the control actually was and the features surrounding it rather than getting to the control and just running off.”

 Thanks again to everyone who helped make the weekend happen.

Article written with thanks by Judy Bell, ESOC/ScotJos