O JARGON BUSTER
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This page is intended to explain all
those mysterious acronyms and phrases which leave the new
(and not so new) orienteer baffled. Click the initial
letter of the jargon which is troubling you, or just
scroll through.
If you can't find what you are looking
for in here, please tell the compiler, Ian Ditchfield,
who will try to write an explanation. Even better, write a
new entry yourself and send it in. Likewise any
corrections or additions to existing entries.
If you are after a general explanation of
orienteering, please see the Your First Orienteering Event page of this web site,
or on the national governing body's web site.
This page is on the Mole Valley web site,
so no apologies for the presence of internal Mole Valley
information, and more detail on south-east competitions
than those for other areas. However, other orienteers are
very welcome to browse (and contribute) and I hope you
find it useful.
- “A” course
- At Level A events, juniors usually have a choice of
two age class courses,
imaginatively called “A” and “B”. “A” is the more
prestigious, “B” being both shorter and easier. There
may also be an elite course for
M20 and W20.
- Activity
- A very minor “event” which is not regarded as a
competition and for which officially no results should
be produced. The advantage of “activities” is that they
do not attract BOF Levy.
- Age Class
- The classification by age and gender used at most
serious orienteering events. Also known as BOF Class. A
British Orienteering web page
has details. Orienteering is not a sport for people who
want to conceal their age!
- Aiming off
- A technique for finding a control on a line feature by deliberately
missing it! If you aim to hit the line feature at the
control and don't get it exactly right, when you reach
the feature, you may not know whether to turn right or
left. If you ¨aim off¨ to ensure that you hit the
feature to the right (say) of the control, then you will
know for sure that you have to turn left.
- AIRE
- Airienteers. A club covering Leeds, Bradford, and the
Craven district of Yorkshire. Web site.
- Anchor lap
- The final lap of a relay race
- Assembly Area
- The place, often a corner of a field, where enquiries,
registration, and optional
features of an event like toilets, traders,
& results display are concentrated.
- Attack point
- A feature near to your control which is easier to
find. You may wish to run fast to your attack point, and
then take more care on your approach to the control.
- AYROC
- Ayrshire Orienteering Club. A Scottish club. Web
site.
- “B” course
- At Level A events, juniors usually have a choice of
two age class courses,
imaginatively called “A” and “B”. “B” is both shorter
and easier than the more prestigious “A”.
- Badge event
- Name which disappeared two re-organisations ago for an
event roughly equivalent to the modern Level B.
Badge events used to be important in the British
Orienteering incentive scheme which was running at the
time. The modern replacement badge scheme
only covers Level A events.
- BADO
- Basingstoke, Andover, and District Orienteers. A
club. Web site.
- Bagged map
- A pre-marked map which is
already in a transparent plastic bag (to protect it from
the weather) when you pick it up.
- BAOC
- British Army Orienteering Club. A closed club,
but most events are open, including the Military League (South).
Web site.
- BARRO
- BARROw-in-Furness and district orienteering club. A
short-lived club, formed in 2005 and disbanded in 2014.
- Base-plate compass
- Another term for protractor
compass.
- BASOC
- Badenoch & Strathspey Orienteering Club. Web
site.
- Beacon Mode
- For SportIdent punching, if
the SportIdent boxes in the forest are in beacon mode,
then SIAC cards will “punch” when in close proximity
without physical contact.
- Bearing
- Direction determined using a compass.
- BEOC
- British Elite Orienteering Championship. Because the British Championship rotates around
the country, it is not always held in the best possible
terrain. This is thought to be good enough for juniors
and veterans, but not acceptable for the M/W20 &
M/W21 age classes! Therefore in
some years, championships for these classes are
separated from the main British Championship and given
their own event.
- Bingo control
- A control which cannot be
reliably found by careful map reading, instead needing
an element of luck. Normally caused either by an
inaccurate map, or by the control being in thick
vegetation a long way from any attack point.
- BKO
- Berkshire Orienteers. A club. Web site.
- BL
- Border Liners orienteering club, based in North
Cumbria. Web site.
- Black course
- A rare colour-coded course, no
more difficult than the Brown
course, but significantly longer.
- Blodslitet
- Staged annually by the Norwegian club Fredrikstad
Skiklubb since the early 1970's, Blodslitet is a
mass start long distance race using several loops with
competitors returning to the finish arena after each
lap. The literal translation of ¨Blodslitet¨ is ¨Blood
Spiller¨. This gives an idea of the original thinking
behind the event, but thankfully it has been toned down
a little to accommodate some of us lesser mortals! SROC introduced a British version,
also intended to become an annual event, in 2002. It was
renamed the Tim Watkins Trophy after the principle
organiser died following a car accident in March 2005.
- Blue course
- The middle distance, technically hard, colour-coded course. The same
standard as the shorter Green and
the longer Brown.
Sometimes there's also a Short Blue course, of the same
standard but shorter, while still being longer than
Green.
- BMBO
- British Mountain Bike Orienteering. The governing body
for mountain bike orienteering. Web site.
- BO
- British Orienteering. A new name for BOF
with a somewhat unfortunate acronym, which we are not
supposed to use.
- BOC
- British Orienteering Championship. An annual event,
held in a different region of the country each year. The
most prestigious domestic event to win in the eyes of
non-orienteers; but actually only roughly equal in
status with the JK. There is a
separate prize for each age class,
so there are actually 32 British Champions! Usually held
on a Saturday, and followed by the British Relay
Championship on the Sunday.
- BOF
- British Orienteering Federation. The governing body of
our sport in the United Kingdom. Makes the rules,
co-ordinates the fixtures, organises publicity, and much
more. The BOF web site is aptly described as a
mine of information: it contains much valuable data, but
some of it is hard to dig out.
Officially, the term ¨BOF¨ should no longer be used, as
it has been realised that it means nothing to the
uninitiated, whereas the new name “British Orienteering”
is much clearer. However, as evidenced by this web page,
old habits die hard!
Membership of BOF is mildly confusing. BOF is a
Federation of twelve associations, nine of them regional associations such as the SEOA, plus three national associations
for Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland. However, the
members with voting rights at the AGM are individual
orienteers, not the associations which make up the
federation. Every serious orienteer in the UK is a
member of BOF, and the vast majority are also members of
a club and a regional or national association. There is
usually some proposal outstanding to change this system.
- BOF Class
- Another name for age class,
more accurate (since gender counts as well as age) but
less used.
- BOF Levy
- One of the sources of funding for BOF is a levy, or
tax, on the income from events organised by orienteering
clubs.
- BOF Number
- Unique identifier issued by BOF to
member orienteers. Very useful to anyone trying to
capture details for a computerised results at an event,
as the database will provide competitor name and other
details from the number without further typing.
- BOF Rankings
- A ranking list compiled using a
complex formula from the results of almost all events in
Britain of Level C or higher.
Events where there is no set course (e.g. score events) or people start close
together (e.g. relay or chasing start events) are
excluded. The BOF Rankings have a web site.
- BOK
- Bristol Orienteering Klubb. Web site.
- Boktrot
- The name BOK give to their biggest
event each year.
- Bottle course
- The equivalent of a Green colour-coded course at a night event.
- Bramble Bashers
- Long socks with reinforcement over the shins to give
some protection from vegetation. Personally, I prefer to
wear short socks and gaiters.
- Brashings
- Remains of branches left on the ground after forestry
work.
- Brikke
- The name for an Emit electronic
control card in the original Norwegian. Pronounced
“brick”, and occasionally spelled that way in English.
- British Orienteering
- The trading name of the British
Orienteering Federation.
- Bronze standard
- The standard which you need to achieve three times on
age class courses at Level A events in order to qualify
for a Bronze badge. Details are on a British
Orienteering web page.
- Brown course
- The longest course common colour-coded
course, although occasionally a longer Black
course is available. Technically difficult, but no
harder than the Blue course. The
route should be cross-country as much as possible (but
not if this means forcing people through unpleasant
vegetation), with significant route choice.
If possible, finding the controls
should require careful map reading (although it must
remain possible to reliably find the controls from the
map without needing luck; controls should never be
hidden).
Sometimes there's also a Short Brown course, of the same
standard but shorter, while still being longer than
Blue.
- BSOA
- British Schools Orienteering Association. Web site.
- BUCS
- British Universities & Colleges Sport. Web site.
- Bursar
- Mole Valley's traditional name for the club treasurer,
currently Bill Alexander. (Club founder Toby Norris
liked funny names.)
- BUSA
- British Universities Sports Association, superseded by
BUCS.
- Caddihoe Chase
- Annual two-day event organised by a different SWOA club each year. First day is a Level B event. Second day is a chasing start.
- Call-up
- At events for which start times are allocated in
advance, you usually need to get to the start area two,
three, or four minutes before your start time, in order
to “called up” by the start officials.
- Captain
- In Mole Valley, the club captain organises relay teams and tries to persuade
people to turn out for other events, such as CompassSport Trophy or South-East League events, in
which their run can contribute to a club score.
- Catching feature
- A large feature beyond a control that, when reached,
informs competitors that the control has been missed.
Normally a line feature, such as a path or a stream. Not
to be confused with a collecting feature!
- Catching features
- An orienteering game for your PC. The free demo
version is pretty good, reportedly the full version is
even better. Web site.
- Championship standard
- The standard which you need to achieve three times in
a single year at Level_A events in
order to qualify for a “Championship” badge. Details are
on a British Orienteering web page.
- Chasing Sprint
- Event format comprising two short races on the same
day. The first, or prologue,
would be a normal race with people starting at different
times; the second a chasing start
based on the times from the first. JOK
organise a Chasing Sprint annually
- Chasing Start
- Sometimes used on the final day of a multi-day event,
with the intention of providing a race in which the
first person to cross the finish line is the winner. The
total time taken by each competitor during the previous
day(s) is added to an arbitrary base time to give the
start time for the competitor. Thus if a chasing start
with a base time 8am is used on the third day of a 3-day
event, and Joe has taken 60:00 and 75:00 on the previous
two days, he will start at 10:15:00. If Fred has taken
65:00 and 70:01, his aggregate time over the first two
days is 1 second longer, so he will start one second
later at 10:15:01.
- Check
- At a SportIdent electronic
punching event, you check your dibber
is working by punching at a “check
station” after you have cleared and before you start.
- CHIG
- Chigwell & Epping Forest orienteering club, based
in the north-east London. Web site.
- Chiltern Challenge
- The name TVOC give to their
biggest event each year.
- Chocolate course
- The equivalent of a Brown colour-coded course at a night event.
- Circle
- The map symbol for a control
site is a circle, normally 7mm across. You are “in
the circle” when you get within 35m of the control on a
1:10,000 scale map.
- CLARO
- A club named after the old wapentake (Viking district)
covering Harrogate, Ripon, and Nidderdale. Web site.
- Classic race
- Term usually only used in international competitions,
to distinguish a traditional “long” course distance
event from a short distance event, probably held on a
different day at the same meeting.
- Clear
- At a SportIdent electronic
punching event, you must empty your dibber
of previous records by punching at
a “clear station” (which looks exactly like a control
apart from not having a kite and being easy to find)
before you start your course. The worst
mistake you can make is to punch the clear unit again
after finishing your course but before downloading.
- Clerk
- Mole Valley's traditional name for the club secretary,
currently Tony Burton. (Club founder Toby Norris liked
funny names.)
- CLOK
- Cleveland Orienteering Klubb. Web site.
- Closed club
- A club which not anybody can join, usually because
membership is restricted to current or former members of
some institution. Examples are university clubs and the
Army club.
- Closed event
- An event which only certain people are allowed to
enter. Examples are events for which you have to qualify
by getting good results in other events, such as the British Elite Championships; events
for which you have to be selected, such as international
matches; or at the other end of the scale, small events
that clubs put on for their own members only.
- Closing date
- At events which can be entered in advance, the closing
date is a deadline for advance entries. Event details
should make it clear whether entries after the closing
date will be rejected, or will simply cost more money.
- Clothing dump
- A place where you can leave coats or other clothing
while you run. Likely to be provided at winter events
with a significant walk from the car park to the Start. Your clothing may remain
where you leave it, or there may be a clothing transfer.
- Clothing Transfer
- A facility sometimes provided whereby the organisers
will move garments left at a clothing dump
either to somewhere near the Finish
or the Assembly Area.
- Clue Sheet
- Slang for Control Descriptions.
- CLYDE
- Clydeside orienteers. A Glasgow club. Web site.
- COBOC
- City of Birmingham Orienteering Club. Web
site.
- Collecting feature
- A large feature before a control that, when reached,
informs competitors how far they have progressed towards
the control. Normally a line feature, such as a path or
a stream. Not to be confused with a catching feature!
- Colour-coded course
- A course named
after a colour, for example Yellow
or Brown, open to anyone
irrespective of age class. In
theory a course of any given colour should be of about
the same difficulty and require about the same amount of
physical effort at any event anywhere in the country.
Unfortunately, many South-East areas are not technically
difficult enough for the harder courses, nevertheless we
in the South-East normally claim to put on a full range
of courses. This means that the theory breaks down, and
courses of the same colour tend to be more technical in
the better orienteering areas. A British Orienteering web page has further details.
- Colour-coded event
- Defunct term for an event offering colour-coded
courses, the nearest modern equivalent would be a Regional event, although
colour-coded courses are often found at other events
too.
-
 Compass
- A device for orientating yourself, very useful in
orienteering! The red needle on a compass always points
in the direction of the magnetic north pole, i.e. up the
map. There are three sorts: the protractor compass
(illustrated) which is held in the hand; the thumb compass which is strapped on
to a thumb; and the clip compass which is attached to
the edge of the map.
- Compass Point
- Vendor of orienteering equipment, sometimes brings a
mobile store to events. Web site.
- CompassSport
- Britain's only national orienteering magazine. Web site.
- CompassSport Cup
- This annual event is the most important inter-club
competition. Traditionally, it was a knock-out
competition with pairs of clubs competing against each
other in a series of rounds, along the lines of
football's FA Cup. The current format has only two
rounds, the first being regional heats at which around
six clubs compete for a single place in the final. The
competition was invented by CompassSport magazine
but is run by BOF.
A CompassSport Cup event requires eight different
courses, with people from different age classes running different
courses. Each competing club can provide as many
runners as it likes on each course. There is no
advance team selection and the “best” 25 performances
from each club count, subject to some constraints to
ensure that successful clubs field people in a wide
variety of age classes. Competition web site.
- CompassSport Trophy
- Equivalent of the CompassSport Cup
for smaller clubs. The rules are the same as for the Cup
except that only 13 scorers are required. A change to
the threshold splitting big and small clubs meant that
Mole Valley competed in the Trophy for the first time in
2008. Competition web site.
- Concorde Chase
- The name BKO give to their biggest
event each year.
- Condes
- Computer program used by many clubs for planning
courses, producing control
descriptions and files for printing courses. Web site.
- Contour
- The brown lines on a map linking points of equal
height. I find it more helpful to think of them as
separating higher ground from lower ground.
Unfortunately they are not marked on the ground!
- Contour interval
- The vertical height difference that you should have to
climb, or descend, to move across the map from one
contour line to the next. The contour interval should be
printed in the “white space” around the edge of the map,
probably next to the scale.
- Contouring
- Choosing a route which keeps to the same height, thus
following a contour line on the map.
- Control
- A point on your course
which you have to visit, marked on your map with a
circle. At each control, you should see a marker or kite, a code,
and a punch.
- Control Card
- Each orienteer carries a control card around the course. At each
control, the card is marked to identify the control
visited. Traditionally, control cards were made of card
or stiff paper, and marked with a needle punch
which made a pattern of holes in the card.
Most events now use electronic control cards, the two
competing systems being Emit and
SportIdent.
- Control Code
- A code, normally two letters or three numbers,
displayed at each control site.
If you are at the correct control, the code will also be
found in your control
descriptions.
- Control Descriptions
- A list of the controls you have to find, including for
each control the code and a
description of the geographical feature you are looking
for. At minor events, and for young junior courses
everywhere, the descriptions will be written in English
(in this country anyway)! At major events, pictorial control descriptions
will ensure that foreigners are not disadvantaged.
- Control Site
- What you are looking for when you go around an
orienteering course!
Each control site is at the centre of a circle marked on
your map and at a feature described in your control descriptions. You know
you have reached it because you see a brightly-coloured
kite and you know it is the right
one because a control code
is displayed which agrees with the one in your control descriptions.
- Control Unit
- Electronic equipment found at each control site at an electronic punching event.
- Controller
- One of the three main officials at an orienteering
event, the others being the organiser
and planner. The controller
should oversee the event, and is responsible for
ensuring that the courses are fair, and that the whole
competition is organised in accordance with the rules of
the sport. The controller is usually the most
experienced official, and usually comes from a club
other than the organising club.
- Corridor Course
- Course with a modified map occasionally found at a
training event or activity. Instead of the whole map
being printed, only a thin strip linking the controls
will be shown. This should allow you to practise “going
straight” rather than diverting along paths.
- Course
- When you take part in an orienteering event, you usually do one course. A
course comprises a start, several
controls, and a finish. You have to visit them all
in the right order (except on a score
course).
- CROC
- Croydon Orienteering Club, once Mole Valley's
neighbours to the north-east. Disbanded autumn 2007,
with most members transferring to DFOK.
- Croeso
- Welsh multi-day event, held in
August every Leap Year. Usually six Level B
events in a week. Web site.
- Cross-Country
- The normal form of orienteering event, in which
competitors visit controls in a prescribed sequence, and
the fastest wins.
- Crossing Point
- A specific location marked on the map at which a line feature, typically a wall
or fence, may be traversed. Crossing points may be
voluntary, in which case crossing at the marked point
will normally be easier than elsewhere. Often, crossing
points are “compulsory”, in which case a competitor
crossing elsewhere risks disqualification. Usually, a
compulsory crossing point results from the requirements
of the landowner, and even a single person crossing
elsewhere can lead to the loss of the area to
orienteering.
- CUOC
- Cambridge University Orienteering Club. (I can't be
bothered to list all university orienteering clubs,
which can usually be identified by the “UOC” suffix;
this one is included because it occasionally organises
public events which Moles may attend.) Web site.
- Decision
point
- A point at which you can no longer continue in the
same direction, for example being required to turn right
at a path junction. A decision point on a leg does not
imply a route choice. There
may be only one obvious route between controls, but this
could require the ability to change direction at a
number of decision points.
- DEE
- Deeside orienteering club, based in Cheshire. Web site.
- Depression (1)
- A hole in the ground. The difference between a
depression and a re-entrant is
that a depression will turn into a pond if it rains
enough, whereas water will flow downhill out of a
re-entrant.
- Depression (2)
- The mental state brought on by wandering around the forest unsuccessfully looking for a
small hole in the ground.
- DEVON
- Devon orienteering club. Web site.
- DFOK
- Dartford Orienteering Klubb, based in the Kent/London
borders. The initials result from the original club name
of Darwin Forest. Web site.
- Diarist
- Mole Valley's traditional name for the editor of the Society Journal, currently
Graham Sutton. (Club founder Toby Norris liked funny
names.)
- Dibber
- Slang term for a SportIdent
electronic control card.
- DIO
- Defence Infrastructure Organisation. Government agency
responsible for obstructing army and civilian access to
military training areas. Web site.
- District Event
- Defunct term roughly replaced by Level C
event, which became Regional
event.
- DNF
- Did Not Finish. Normally appears by your name in the
results list if you give up, or lose your electionic control card.
Please do always report to the download whether
you finish your course or not, otherwise it will be
assumed that you have met with an accident and people
will be sent out to search for you.
- Dob Studs
- Orienteering shoes with metal-tipped studs. Ideal for
getting a grip on brashings or
wet rock, but they do tend to transmit shock waves up
the legs when running on hard surfaces.
- Dorset Delight
- The name WSX give to their biggest
event each year.
- Double Dumpling
- Annual pair (Saturday & Sunday) of Level B events organised by NOR.
- Download
- At an electronic punching
event, the action of transferring information from your
electronic control card to the organisers' computer. The
most important rule in electronic orienteering is that if you have registered you must go the
download station and ensure that you are recorded
there as well. Failure to comply with this will
mean that the organisers will think you are still out in
the forest, and may organise a
search. Please be particularly careful to ensure that
you are recorded if you have lost your electronic control card (since you won't
be able to download electronically in the normal way).
- DVO
- Derwent Valley Orienteers. A Derbyshire club. Web site.
- EAOA
- East Anglian Orienteering Association. The regional association for East
Anglia. Web site.
- EBOR
- A club named for the old name of York, covering North
Yorkshire south of the North Yorkshire Moors watershed
and east of the A1. Web site.
- E-card
- Electronic control card, such as a SI dibber or an Emit brikke.
- ECKO
- Loch Eck Orienteers. A club from Dunoon, Argyll,
Scotland. Web site.
- EEOL
- East of England Orienteering League. A series of
midweek events, an equivalent of the Military League (South),
covering Eastern England from north London to Yorkshire.
Fixtures on the RAFO web site.
- Electronic punching or
E-punching
- Using an hi-tech device, such as a SportIdent dibber
or an Emit brikke,
instead of the traditional paper control card.
- Elephant track
- A path that appears during a competition due to many
orienteers trampling the vegetation along the same
route.
- Elite
- Someone with aspirations to be selected for their
country's team for major internation competitions. The
meaning is not as pretentious as it might sound.
- Elite course
- At some major events, extra long courses are provided
for the best competitors at M/W20 and M/W21 age classes. Entry is usually
restricted by selection.
- ELO
- East Lothian Orienteers. A Scottish club. Web site.
- EMOA
- East Midlands Orienteering Association. The regional association for the East
Midlands. Web site.
- Emit
- One of two competing forms of electronic punching
equipment, replacing the traditional paper control card and needle punch. With EMIT, you carry a
brikke in your hand, which you fit
into a socket at the control site. The rival SportIdent system is more
popular in Britain, although Army and SCOA
events use Emit. Web site.
- EOC
- English Orienteering Council. The national association
for England, unlike its other British equivalents, not
part of the BOF federation. Web site.
- EOD
- Entry On the Day. Meaning that you can just turn up on
the day of the event, find registration,
and buy your run.
- EPOC
- East Pennine Orienteering Club, based in Yorkshire. Web site.
- ERYRI
- The club for North Wales. Web site.
- ESOC
- Edinburgh Southern Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Event
- An orienteering competition, at which there will be a
number of courses. The term
“event” emphasises that the fact that you can enjoy
participating in orienteering without actually
competing.
- Fabian4
- Most popular of several companies which event
organisers may use to collect advance entries over the
internet. Web site.
- Feature
- Anything marked on the map which might help you
navigate or be used as a control
site.
- Fight
- Slang term for thick or unpleasant vegetation
represented by the darkest of the green colours on
the map.
- Finish
- The end of your course,
where your final time is recorded. Marked on your map by
a pair of concentric circles. At events with traditional
paper control cards, your
card will be collected at the finish.
The most important rule in orienteering is that if you are recorded as being in the forest, you must ensure that
you are recorded as having left it. At an event
with traditional control cards, this meant that you
must visit the finish if you went through the start, even if you did not
complete the course. At electronic punching
events, the start and finish are no longer so
important, and the rule is that if you registered than you must
visit the download before
departing the event, even if you never actually start
your course.
- Flag (noun)
- Another term for a control kite.
- Flag (verb)
- To run out of energy half-way around a course!
- FMD
- Foot & Mouth Disease. Infectious disease of cloven
hoofed animals which causes panic amongst humans. Web site.
- Forest
- A technical term in orienteering, meaning the
competition area. Usually accurate in layman's terms
too, but occasionally an orienteering forest may have no
trees at all!
- Form line
- An extra contour on the map,
with a dashed brown line instead of the normal solid
one. Like a normal contour line, a form line links
points of equal height. Unlike a normal contour line, it
does not indicate a vertical separation of one contour interval from the
adjacent contour lines. Form lines are used by the
mapper to convey the shape of particularly small or
detailed landforms to the orienteer.
- FROLICS
- Old name for the GLOSS series
- FVO
- Forth Valley Orienteers. A Scottish club. Web site.
- Gaffle
- At a relay event, people in
different teams run more or less the same course at the
same time. So that everyone has to navigate, rather than
just follow the person in front, the courses are
normally ¨gaffled¨ so that there are two or three
controls close to each other, with each person visiting
only one of them. In order that fairness is preserved,
each team must collectively run the same legs
by the end of the event, but in a three-person relay,
any given leg may be on the first lap
for some teams, the second lap for others, and the third
lap for the remainder.
- Galoppen
- Norwegian word meaning ¨the gallop¨, popularly
mistranslated by the British as ¨ranking list¨. Some
series of events are called galoppens, the best known
locally being the South-East
Galoppen.
- George Murray Trophy
- A trophy presented annually to the Mole Valley member
aged 40 or over who scores most points for the club in
the South-East League.
Presented in memory of a Mole Valley member who died
around 1988.
- GLOSS
- Greater London Orienteering Summer Series. An annual
series of (usually) four events on consecutive weekends
in July, held on areas within or very close to the M25.
The areas need to have an extensive path network or a
large amount of mown grass, since running cross-country
in the South-East in high summer is rarely pleasant.
Every competitor runs the same course of Light Green
standard. The Frolics are of particular interest to new
orienteers as there is a handicap system which adjusts
not just for age class
as usual, but also for performance record. Thus being an
experienced orienteer is a substantial disadvantage.
Originally there was a strong bias to the social side
with events in London Parks and pre-entered teams of 8
from different clubs locked in friendly rivalry before
recourse to the pub. Nowadays the events have become
more normal: entry on the day, and no limit on team
size, although only six can score from each club, but it
is hoped the basic sociability coming from everyone
running the same course carries on. More information on
the LOK web site during the season.
- GO
- Guildford Orienteers. A club, Mole Valley's neighbours
to the west. Web site.
- Gold standard
- The standard which you need to achieve three times at
Level A events in order to qualify
for a Gold badge. Details are on a British
Orienteering web page.
- GRAMP
- Grampian Orienteers. A Scottish club. Web site.
- Green
- Slang term for any of the less runnable forest
indicated by various shades of green colouration on the
map.
- Green course
- A technically hard but not too strenuous colour-coded course. Longer and
harder than Light Green,
shorter but no easier than Blue.
The route should be cross-country as much as possible
(but not if this means forcing people through unpleasant
vegetation), with significant route choice.
If possible, finding the controls
should require careful map reading (although it must
remain possible to reliably find the controls from the
map without needing luck; controls should never be
hidden).
Sometimes there's also a Short Green course, of the same
standard but shorter. Occasionally there's even a Very
Short Green. This last would probably be aimed at the
oldest and most frail competitors, so the planner should
attempt the difficult feat of producing a course which
is technically hard but physically easy.
- Grid Reference
- A means of identifying any point in Great Britain with
a brief code. The usual ¨six figure¨ grid reference
identifies a box 100m square using only two letters and
six numbers. An explanation can be found on any Ordnance
Survey map or at this web site.
- HALO
- Humberside And Lincolnshire Orienteers. Web
site.
- Handicap
- A handicap competition is usually one in which the
results are adjusted in a predetermined way in order to
allow people from different age
classes to compete on level terms. For an
individual competition, this would normally be done by
multiplying time taken or points scored by a different
factor for each class. For a relay,
each class would be allocated a number of handicap
points and each team would have to be picked to get
below a handicap limit; the race would then be won by
the first across the finish line as usual.
- Hand rail
- Another term for line feature.
- Harearound
- The name BADO give to their
biggest event each year.
- Harris relay
-
A team event which
requires planning and coordination under time
pressure, originating in Germany and introduced to the
UK in the late 1980's by the then chairman of army
orienteering, Lt. Col. Steve Harris. Despite the relay
in the name, all team members receive identical maps
and run simultaneously. It is a Spanish Score
event, with two sets of controls. ¨Spine¨ controls
must be visited by each and every team member. The
remaining controls need be visited by only one team
member. The team's time is that of the last member to
reach the finish. Failure to collectively punch each
control or individually punch each spine control will
be penalised, by a hefty time penalty or possibly
outright disqualification. It is vital for the team to
plan and agree who is going to which controls before
leaving the start!
- Harvester
- Annual relay, held in a different region of the county
each year, usually in summer. Possibly the most
eccentric event in the calendar. The main event is a
seven person relay, with the start timed so that the
first three or four laps are run in the dark, with the
remainder after dawn. Usually, this means a start soon
after the pubs close for the night! There is also a
five-person relay with shorter laps.
The main prizes are on the seven-person course, an
open class in which any combination can run, and a handicap class. Mole Valley won
the Handicap class in 1999. Competition rules in a British Orienteering document.
Called the ¨Harvester¨ for the obvious reason that it
was invented and first organised by the now defunct
Combined Harvesters orienteering club. Now, can anyone
explain that name?
- HAVOC (1)
- Havering and South Essex Orienteering Club. Web site.
- HAVOC (2)
- Collective noun for a group of orienteers 30 seconds
after the beginning of a mass start
score event.
- HH
- Happy Herts orienteering club, based in Hertfordshire.
Web site.
- HOC
- Harlequins Orienteering Club. A club based in the West
Midlands conurbation. Web
site.
- Home Internationals
- Annual contests between selected teams representing
England, Wales, Scotland, & Northern Ireland.
- INT
- Interlopers. An Edinburgh club. Web
site.
- INVOC
- Inverness Orienteering club. Britain's most northerly
club. Web site.
- IOF
- International Orienteering Federation. The world
governing body of our sport. Web
site.
- IOF descriptions
- Another name for pictorial
control descriptions.
- Jamie Stevenson Trophy
- Scottish equivalent of the Yvette
Baker Trophy. Named after Scotland's 2003 World
Sprint Champion.
- JIRC
- Junior Inter-Regional Championships. Not strictly the
correct title, as it's open to all of BOF's
constituent associations, National
as well as Regional. For
association teams of M/W14s, 16s and 18s. A 2-day
competition with individual on first day and relays on
the second, both races contributing points to overall
title. Held at the end of June.
- JK
- Jan Kjellström festival of orienteering. The annual
Easter event, equal in prestige with the British Championship,
and held in a different region of the country each year.
The individual competitions, for each age class, comprise separate
races on Saturday and Sunday, with the aggregate time
determining the result. There is then a relay competition Easter Monday. Web page.
The event is named for a Swede who was instrumental
in introducing orienteering to this country, and died
in a road accident in 1967. It is always referred to
as the ¨the J K¨, possibly because no English person
can pronounce Kjellström.
- JM1, JM2, JM5L, etc
- Formerly boys classes at age
class events, which have now been abolished.
- JOK
- Jesus Orienteering Klubb. Closed
club for alumni of Oxford University. Noted for
their flying pig logo. Read the club history on their web site
for an explanation of the name.
- Journal
- See Society Journal.
- Junior
- Someone who has yet to reach the year of his or her
21st birthday, i.e. age class
M20, W20, or younger.
- JWOC
- Junior World Orienteering Championships. Held in late
July, for teams of up to 6 men and 6 women under 21. An
IOF web site has details.
- JW1, JW2, JW5L, etc
- Formerly girls classes at age
class events, which have now been abolished.
- Kanter
- Not an orienteering term, but the name given by the LDWA to an event requiring navigation
between checkpoints identified by grid
references. Bring your own map!
- KERNO
- The orienteering club for Cornwall. Web site.
- KFO
- Kingdom of Fife Orienteers. The club formerly known as
West Fife Orienteers (WFO). Web site.
- KIMM
- Karrimor International Mountain Marathon. The first mountain marathon, no
longer sponsored by Karrimor and now known as the OMM.
- Kite
- The red and white marker hanging at every control site (and at the
centre of the Start triangle).
- Klubb
- The word for club in both Norwegian and Swedish. Some
British orienteering clubs like to emphasise the sports
Scandinavian origins by calling themselves klubbs.
- KNC
- Kent Night Cup. A winter series of Thursday evening night events organised mainly by SAX and DFOK.
- Knoll
- A very small hill.
- Lakes 5-Days
- English multi-day event, held in
August every fourth year, avoiding the years with a Scottish or Welsh
equivalent. Five Level B events on
consecutive days in the Lake District. Web
site.
- Lap
- The section of a relay course
run by a single person. Thus a three-person relay has
three laps. Most people use the term ¨leg¨
rather than lap
- LDWA
- Long Distance Walkers Association. Not an orienteering
organisation, but they do arrange events requiring
navigation through the countryside, albeit
non-competitive and along public rights of way. You have
to provide your own Ordnance Survey map. Web site.
- Leg (1)
- The section of an orienteering course between two
adjacent controls (or between
the start and the first control).
- Leg (2)
- One person's course at a relay
event. In which case, such a leg would be made up of
many legs. To avoid this confusion, it has been
suggested that a single course at a relay event should
be called a lap,
and this is the nomenclature used in this Jargon Buster.
Unfortunately ¨leg¨ is still the term most people use
for a lap.
- LEI
- Leicestershire orienteering club. Web site.
- (event) Level
- One of the key features of British orienteering
organisation unfortunately seems to require the changing
the nomenclature for different sizes of events every few
years. The version which has just expired at the time of
writing this, May 2017, divided events into:
- Level A
- the most important events, such as the major
championships. Often organised by Regional Associations
rather than individual clubs. As of May 2017,
renamed Major.
- Level B
- high quality events aimed at people who are
prepared to travel a fair distance, as well as those
living locally. Normally organised by individual
clubs, but fixtures co-ordinated nationally to avoid
clashes. Broadly equivalent to Regional Events two
re-organisations ago, and more important than
Regional events now. As of May 2017, renamed National.
- Level C
- run of the mill National Ranking events. Fixtures
co-ordinated at regional level. Broadly equivalent
to District Events before the most recent
re-organisation. As of May 2017, renamed Regional.
- Level D
- minor events put on by clubs primarily for their
own members (and newcomers) with little or no
co-ordination with other clubs. Broadly equivalent
to Local events before the most recent
re-organisation, and as of May 2017 renamed back to
Local.
And for completeness, there are also Activities, which, unlike
events, are not competitions and not supposed to
produce formal results.
- Light Green course
- A moderately technical colour-coded
course. Longer and harder than Orange,
shorter and easier than Green. The
route should not be (entirely) along line features, but must
require cross-country navigation. However, areas of
complex contours should be
avoided, and controls should
have a collecting feature
behind them.
- Limited colour-coded
- A smaller range colour-coded
courses than would be expected at a normal event. The
area may be too small for long courses or too simple for
technical courses, or the number of people running
colour-coded courses may be too small to justify the
effort of planning the full range. Most events offering
limited colour-coded courses are Level
D events, but Level A or B
events which are primarily orgainsed around age-class courses may offer them
for beginners.
- Line feature
- Anything on the map which can be followed, such as a
path, stream, or wall.
- LOC
- Lakeland Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Local (event)
- One of the functions of BOF is to
periodically change the names which indicate the
relative status of orienteering events. From May 2017,
the lowest level of formal orienteering event has been
renamed from Level D
to "Local"; a reversion to the name as it had two
reorganisations ago. The next level up is now "Regional" event. Local events are
minor events put on by clubs primarily for their own
members (and newcomers) with little or no co-ordination
with other clubs. They have some advantages: they tend
to be cheap to enter, easy to put on, and not too
crowded. Many orienteers go to more local events than
any other sort.
- Local member
- A person who is a member of an orienteering club, but
is not a member of BOF through that
club. This may be because the person is not a member of
BOF at all, or it may be because the person's prime
loyalty is to a different orienteering club.
- LOG
- Lincoln Orienteering Group. A club. Web
site.
- LOK
- London Orienteering Klubb, based in London north of
the Thames. Web site.
- Long course
- At events of Level B and higher
standard, adult competitors usually have a choice of
Long and Short age class courses. These should
be of equal difficulty, and in theory are of equal
merit. However, almost all of the top orienteers will
run Long in preference to Short. (At Level A
Events and above, there may also be an elite course for M21 and W21.)
- Loop race
- A loop race is a mass start
event, producing head-to-head racing with the winner
being the first to cross the finish line. Some
requirement to navigate is preserved by the courses
being gaffled, which means that,
while each person eventually runs the same legs as every other, the sequence may
be different.
There are two different ways to achieve this. One is
to have effectively a one-person relay,
with the competitors running two, three, or even more
(depending on the competition rules) laps
consecutively, using a map which shows only one lap.
Each lap would share the same start and finish, which
would be adjacent, and there would be a map exchange between laps.
The alternative is for the entire course to be
printed on just one map. It is still necessary for the
competitors to keep revisiting a single point at which
the different loops start and finish, but this need no
longer be the start and finish points for the entire
race. A feature of this method is that the map gets a
lot of overprint around the common control. If there
are three loops, then the common control will be
visited no less than four times, meaning that eight
purple lines and four numbers have to be fitted around
it. The competitor must take great care to leave the
common control in the right direction each time;
running a loop in the wrong sequence or in the wrong
direction will result in disqualification.
- Lycras
- Body-hugging tights worn by many orienteers. The name
comes from the material of which they are made.
- Major (event level)
- One of the functions of BOF is to
periodically change the names which indicate the
relative status of orienteering events. From May 2017,
the most important events, the main championships, have
been renamed from Level A to
"Major". The next rung down are now "National"
events, which is especially confusing since before two
renamings ago, "National" was the top level.
- Maize Maze
- Some farmers have discovered that the public is
willing to pay admission to wander around a maze
constructed of paths mown through a maize (Indian corn)
crop. Not just do they get more money than they
would from selling the crop, they can still harvest most
of the crop at the end of the season. Some orienteers
have discovered that maze maizes make for a great
orienteering challenge. Definitely worth trying at least
once!
- Map
- The orienteer's most important tool, we'd be lost
without it (literally). Orienteering maps are larger
scale and much more detailed and accurate than Ordance
Survey maps. A detailed introduction is beyond the scope
of this Jargon Buster, but the thing that most confuses
beginners is the colours. For a forest map, white means
runnable forest, progressively darker shades of green
indicate progressively thicker trees and/or undergrowth,
while yellow/orange colours are used for open areas.
- MapRun or MapRunF
- A mobile phone app onto which you download a course
file. The phone buzzes and vibrates when its detects
that you have reached a control. Results can be uploaded
to a central database. Website.
Further details on the MV website.
Youtube video. See also Usynligo.
- MapRunG
- Version of MapRunF for running
on a wristwatch rather than a mobile phone.
- Map bag
- A tough transparent plastic bag that you can put your
orienteering map in to protect it from weather, forest, and sweat. Rarely seen now
that most maps are printed on waterproof paper.
- Map corrections
- Alterations required to an out of date map. Often, at
an event using master maps,
there will be some map corrections for you to copy down
near Registration.
- Map exchange
- The process of swapping one map for another in
competition time. The competitor would drop the map used
to find the location and pick up a new one. Sometimes
used when a long course on a small area would produce
too many crossing lines if printed on one copy of the
map.
- Map memory
- A course which you have to complete without taking a
map with you. Instead, each control has a little section
of map showing the leg to the next.
You have to study this and leave it in place when you
set out for the next control. Good training, since it
forces you to decide on your route and identify the key
features rather than just rush off.
- MAROC
- Mar Orienteering Club. A Scottish club. Web site.
- Maroon course
- The equivalent of a Red colour-coded course at a night event.
- Mass Start
- All competitors, or one competitor from each team,
start simultaneously. Always used for relays,
sometimes used for score events.
Except in score events, one consequence of a mass start
is that the first to cross the finish line is the winner
(unless disqualified).
- Master
- Mole Valley's traditional name for the club chairman,
currently Ian Ditchfield. (Club founder Toby Norris
liked funny names.)
- Masters
- Another term for veterans.
- Master map
- One of a small number of maps with courses
drawn onto it by the planner. At
an event with master maps, you get given a map with no
course on it at Registration.
Usually, the master maps will be located just after theStart, and your first task after
your time starts is to copy down your course from the
master map. Sometimes (normally for beginners courses),
the master map will be before the Start, so you can copy
the map at your leisure. Rarely seen these days, it is
now usual for the course to be printed on your map
before you get it.
- Maze
- A complex network of uncrossable barriers providing an
intricate navigation problem. Sometimes manufactured for
the event out of crowd-control barriers, sometimes
created by selectively mowing a maize crop. Good fun,
and surprisingly difficult at speed!
- MDDXO
- Middlesex Orienteers.
- MDOC
- Manchester and District Orienteering Club. Web site.
- MEROC
- Formerly Merseyside Orienteering Club, now defunct.
- Michael Brandon Mitre
- The name CHIG give to their
biggest event each year.
- Micro-O
- A variation of orienteering which requires very
precise navigation to select the correct control kite from a cluster. On a
conventional course, there should be no other control
kites within 30m of the one you are looking for. In
micro-O, there will be. Furthermore, there will be no control codes for you to
check. You must therefore use your skill with the map to
ensure that you punch the correct control, which will be
exactly in the centre of the circle on your map and fit
with the feature described in your control descriptions.
If you punch the wrong control in a cluster at micro-O,
you don't get disqualified. Instead you get some other
sort of penalty, probably added time, but remain
competitive. Further information may be found at this web page
relating to what I believe was the first serious UK
event to use micro-O (as part only of some courses
only).
- Middle distance
- An event in conventional orienteering terrain with
fairly frequent controls, so that the competitor has to
do a lot of fine navigation into controls. As the name
implies, the course will be of shorter than usual
length, but not as short as a short
or sprint distance.
- Military League (South)
- A series of midweek events, mostly organised by BAOC, popular with civilians who do
not have to work all day every Wednesday. Details on the
BAOC web site. Events are always
open to everyone, although occasionally advance notice
of attendance and proof of identity may be required for
security reasons. They can be anywhere in southern
Britain, but tend to concentrate near the army bases
near Aldershot and Salisbury Plain.
- Mini Mass Start
- Relays always have a mass start for the first lap, with
competitors running second or subsequent laps usually
starting when the previous runner in their team
finishes. Mini mass starts are a device for reducing the
elapsed time taken by the slowest teams. Some time after
all the runners for the teams in contention have
started, the remaining runners on the same lap may be
started together in a mini mass start, without waiting
for their previous lap runners to finish.
- Mispunch
- A competitor whose visit to a particular control is
not recorded on the control card
(whether paper or electronic) is said to have
¨mispunched¨. This will normally be because the
competitor has accidentally missed out the control or
visited the wrong control without realising. More
rarely, competitor may have failed to operate the punch correctly.
- Molasses
- The trophy presented to the fastest lady at the Mole
Valley club championship, contested annually at a
colour-coded event. Traditionally run over Blue course, but in recent years a Green course has been chosen to
allow the more elderly or less fit to join in.
Also a frequently used name for a female Mole Valley relay team.
- MOK
- Marlborough Orienteering Klubb, defunct, having merged
with SLOG in 2005 to form NWO.
- Mole Night
- An evening event primarily for Mole Valley members
(and prospective new members) with an emphasis on
socialising rather than competition. Normally some sort
of orienteering-related activity followed by food and
drink. Mole Nights were first introduced in 2011, and
are currently twice a month on Thursdays during the
lighter half of the year.
- Momentum (1)
- A common name for a Mole relay team,
resulting from the scientific definition of momentum as
mass x velocity, or MV.
- Momentum (2)
- A regular series of local orienteering-related
activities intended for people who are not (yet) regular
orienteers, or do not wish to travel far. Now defunct?
Momentum met once a week at the Leatherhead Leisure
Centre.
- MOR
- Moravian Orienteers. A Scottish club. Web site.
- Mountain Marathon
- Long distance orienteering event in hills or
mountains, usually two events in consecutive days with
aggregate time counting. Frequently, competitors have to
carry food and shelter for the overnight stop. Events
are listed on this adventure racing web site,
amidst other non-orienteering events.
- MTBO
- Mountain Bike Orienteering. Orienteering on two
wheels. An IOF web page
has information, or see the BMBO
web site.
- Multi-day event
- A series of separate orienteering events over a
restricted time period, usually with some sort of
combined scoring system to produce overall winners for
each class. Possibly three events on consecutive days of
a Bank Holiday, such as Springtime in
Shropshire, or six events in seven days during a
summer week, such as the Scottish
6-Days.
- MV
- Mole Valley. That's us! The standard abbreviation for
Mole Valley Orienteering Club.
- MVMCFRS or MVM&CFRS
- Mole Valley Map & Compass Foot Racing Society. The
formal name of Mole Valley Orienteering Club. The
official explanation for this name is that when Mole
Valley was formed, the term ¨orienteering¨ was not
widely understood by the general public (so no change
there then!), and a name was chosen to better describe
the sport. The unofficial explanation is that our
founder, Toby Norris, being a scientist, was keen to
have the letters FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) after
his name.
- MVOC
- Miami Valley Orienteering Club. Nothing to do with
Mole Valley, or even Miami in Florida, this club is
based in Ohio, USA. Web site.
- MWOC
- Mid Wales Orienteers, a club. Website.
- M10, M12, M21, M70, etc
- Age classes for men.
- M10A, M12A, M18A, etc
- “A” courses for boys.
- M10B, M12B, M18B, etc
- “B” courses for boys.
- M20E, M21E
- “Elite” courses for men.
- M21L, M35L, M75L, etc
- “Long” courses for men.
- M21S, M35S, M75S, etc
- “Short” courses for men.
- National
Association
- Three of twelve groups which make up BOF
are the National Associations for Wales,
Scotland & Northern Ireland.
Constitutionally, they have similar status to the
English Regional Associations,
although the Scottish Association is more independent
and powerful than the others. Additionally, they are
responsible for teams for the Home
Internationals. Just to make matters really
confusing, there is also an English national association
which is not a member of BOF, and seems to have little
function beyond selecting home international teams!
- National (event)
- One of the functions of BOF is to
periodically change the names which indicate the
relative status of orienteering events. From May 2017,
high quality events which are not major championships,
but still aimed at people prepared to travel a fair
distance (as well as those living locally) have been
renamed from Level B to
"National". This is especially confusing as up to two
reorganisations ago, "National" events were the top
level. Broadly equivalent to Regional Events two
re-organisations ago, and more important than Regional
events now. The appropriateness of this grade name
inflation can be judged from the fact that there are
often simultaneous "National" events taking place in
different parts of the nation. The higher level is now "Major" event, and the next level
down is now "Regional" event.
- NATO
- Newcastle & Tyneside Orienteers. A club. Web site.
- Navy course
- The equivalent of a Blue colour-coded course at a night event.
- NEOA
- North-East Orienteering Association. The regional association for North-East
England. Web site.
- NGOC
- North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Niche
- A small re-entrant.
- Night orienteering
- Yes, this does mean what you think it does!
Orienteering after dark with a torch. The best night
orienteers are nearly as quick at night as during the
day. It's good fun. I recommend trying it, but not until
you are reasonably confident in daylight. “Night” is
perhaps a misnomer, it means “after dark”, but most
events are on winter evenings, and finished by 9pm.
There used to be a popular league of night events in the
south-east which rejoiced in the acronym SENILE! This disappeared around
2007, but there is now a Kent Night Cup
series instead.
- NIOA
- Northern Ireland Orienteering Association. The national association for those
parts of Ireland which are officially British. Web site.
- NN
- Northern Navigators. A club based around Durham and
Wearside. Web site.
- NOC
- Nottinghamshire Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Non-competitive
- A person who runs a course, but whose
result is ignored for the purpose of calculating
placings, points, or scores. Normally someone who is
deemed to have an unfair advantage, perhaps through
familiarity with the competition area.
- Nopesport
- Orienteering web site with a
useful discussion forum
for debating ideas with other orienteers.
- Nopesport Urban League
- Annual national league of urban events,
mostly full-length rather than sprint, founded and
co-ordinated by Nopesport.
Became the UK Urban League when Nopesport ceased to be
active. (Out of date) web site.
- NOR
- Norfolk Orienteering club. Web
site.
- Norwegian event
- Another term for a map memory
event.
- November Classic
- SOC's annual Level B
event in the New Forest on the first Sunday in November.
Website.
- NOW
- National Outdoor Week or National Outdoor Welcome. An
annual campaign to get people into the open air.
Defunct?
- NUL
- Nopesport Urban League.
- NWO
- North Wilts Orienteers. Club formed in 2005 by merging
MOK (Marlborough Orienteering Klubb) and SLOG (Swindon
Locality Orienteering Group) Web
site.
- NWOA
- North-West Orienteering Association. The regional association for North-West
England. Web site.
- OCAD
- Computer program used by many clubs, including Mole
Valley, for drawing maps. Can also be used for planning
courses, but suffers from expensive and inflexible
license conditions, so many prefer to use Condes or Purple Pen
instead. Web site.
- Ochre course
- The equivalent of a Yellow colour-coded course at a night event.
- October Odyssey
- Annual pair (Saturday & Sunday) of Level B events, organised by a
different NEOA club each year.
Occasionally one day may be a Level A
event.
- OD
- Octavian Droobers orienteering club. Based in
Warwickshire. And you thought Map & Compass Foot
Racing Society a weird name for an orienteering club?
You'll have to read the history on their web site
for an explanation of this one.
- ODR
- Offa's Dyke Raiders orienteering club, defunct, having
merged with ERYRI.
- OK Nuts
- One of the first English orienteering clubs, founded
by Olympic athlete Gordon Pirie when living at Nutfield
in what is now Mole Valley territory. The club became
part of SLOW, who now run an annual
“OK Nuts Trophy” in memory of the club and in particular
their leading member, Mike Wells-Cole, who died in 1976
after training with flu.
- Olive course
- The equivalent of a Light Green
colour-coded course at a night event.
- OMM
- Original Mountain Marathon. The first mountain marathon,
originally sponsored by Karrimor. Web site.
- OO Trophy
- The name GO give to their biggest
event each year, named for Occasional Orienteers, a
defunct club that became part of GO.
- Open club
- A club which anybody can join, i.e. not a closed club.
- Orange course
- A moderately short and not too difficult colour-coded course. Longer and
harder than Yellow, shorter and
easier than Light Green, much
shorter but no easier than Red. The
hardest course which a novice should contemplate at the
first event, and then only if an experienced map reader.
The route should be along line
features such as paths, fences, or streams, but
there may be a route choice.
Controls may be on point features near to the
line feature being followed, but there must a collecting feature
behind them.
- Organiser
- One of the three main officials at an orienteering
event, the others being the planner
and controller. The organiser
is in overall charge of everything that happens “outside
the forest”, i.e. is responsible for everything except
the planners tasks. A wise organiser will delegate all
the tasks and perform a coordinating role.
- O-Ringen
- Annual Swedish 5-Days event, on a different area each
day. The biggest event in the world. Web
site. The name is sometimes applied to British
events which involve multiple runs on different areas.
- OUOC
- Oxford University Orienteering Club. (I can't be
bothered to list all university orienteering clubs,
which can usually be identified by the “UOC” suffix;
this one is included because it occasionally organises
public events which Moles may attend.) Web site.
- Out of Bounds
- Somewhere you are not allowed to go! Usually a part of
the mapped area for which permission for orienteering
has not been obtained.
- Overprinting
- The usual term for the process of creating pre-marked maps. This
traditionally involves a second printing process, adding
the course to a
map on which the terrain details have already been
printed.
- Pace counting
- A technique for estimating distance travelled by
counting strides taken.
- Par
- At at event with colour-coded
courses, each course has a “par” time or position. To
achieve par, you must either finish in the top half of
the results in terms of placing, or you must finish
within 150% of the winners time, whichever turns out to
be easier. If you beat par on the same colour course at
three SEOA colour-coded events, you
can claim a colour badge from the SEOA. (This is not the
same as the badge you can get from BOF
for doing well at Level A events!)
- Park orienteering
- Short course orienteering in a
venue that could be described as a park, normally an
area of mown grass and flower beds in a town.
- Permanent orienteering course
- A course in a public place with control markers
permanently in place. The markers will probably be
wooden posts rather than kites, and
there will be no punches.
Permanent courses can be used at any time; you don't
need to wait for an event. A British Orienteering web page has
further details.
- Peter Burt Trophy
- A trophy presented annually to the most improved
orienteer in the South-East League,
in memory of Mole Valley member Peter Burt, who died in
May 1999 after a long battle with cancer. It rewards
personal achievement on the basis of a fiendishly
complicated scoring system in the tradition of Peter's
long stewardship of the League.
- Peter Palmer Relays
- A junior version of the Harvester,
open to over-10s and under-19s (i.e. M/W12's to M/W18's
inclusive), and named for the “father of British
orienteering” who died in 2003. The main race is an
8-person relay starting before dawn, with the first 3-4
legs in the dark. Laps are of varying distances and
standards ranging from Yellow to
Blue, with at least 2 boys and 2
girls in each team required. A handicap trophy is also
available, and there is a 5-person race open to small
clubs. The event is normally staged in September in the
Midlands. Competition rules in a British Orienteering document.
- PFO
- Pendle Forest Orienteering club, based in central
Lancashire. Web site.
- Pictorial Control
Descriptions
- Symbolic control descriptions, defined
by the IOF, which have the advantage
that they are the same everywhere. You will be grateful
if you ever orienteer in a foreign country! Normally
used for most courses at major events in this country,
so you will still need to learn them eventually even if
you have no plans to venture overseas. The official
definitions can be downloaded. When you think
you known them, have fun testing yourself with this game.
- Planner
- One of the three main officials at an orienteering
event, the others being the organiser
and controller. The planner
is responsible for setting the courses, providing the
overprinted maps or master maps and the control
descriptions, and for getting the controls into the forest and in the right places.
- Platform
- A small level patch of ground, typically circular and
about 3m in diameter. Often caused by charcoal burning.
- POC
- Permanent Orienteering Course.
- Point feature
- Anything on the map which is not a line feature, such as a knoll, depression,
or boulder.
- POTOC
- Potteries Orienteering Club. Based in North
Staffordshire. Web site.
- POW
- Powys and North Ceredigion Orienteering Club, who
changed their name to Mid Wales
Orienteers sometime around 2011.
- Pre-marked map
- At an event with pre-marked maps, you do not get a map
at registration. Instead, you pick up a map complete
with your course
just after the Start. This means
that the organisers have to provide a map with a course
on for each competitor, which is more trouble and
expense than just providing a few Master maps.
Pre-marked maps are the norm nowadays at event the
smallest event.
- PreO
- The traditional form of Trail
Orienteering. Well explained on this British Orienteering web page.
- Protractor compass
- The traditional form of compass.
- Prologue
- Term sometimes applied to a short first event in a
series of two of more. Possibly the first of the two
races in a chasing sprint.
- Punch
 A
device for marking your control
card when you reach a control site.
At events using traditional paper control cards, a
needle punch (illustrated) will make a distinctive
pattern of holes in the card. With electronic equipment
such as Emit or SportIdent, the term “punching”
is still used to describe the action required to record
your visit to the control.- Punching start
- At an event with electronic
punching, the actual time you start your course
may be recorded by ¨punching¨ at the start. This is
easier and less stressful than the traditional timed start for both competitor
and organisers, as it is not essential to start at a
particular second.
- Purple Pen
- Free computer program for planning courses, producing
control
descriptions and files for printing courses. Web site.
- QO
- Quantock Orienteers. A Somerset club. Web site.
- RAFO
- Royal Air Force Orienteers. Web site.
- Ranking List
- A table which attempts to sequence orienteers in order
of merit by awarding points for performances over a
number of events. The best known is the BOF Rankings.
- Ranking Points
- Scores for the Ranking List, see previous entry.
- Red course
- A course of the same standard as Orange,
but much longer. Aimed at near beginners who want a
longer course. Particularly popular during the London
Marathon training season.
- Re-entrant
- A re-entrant is a contour feature. It is an
indentation into the hillside or a valley, frequently
sloping. The opposite of a spur.
The difference between a re-entrant and a depression is that water can
flow downhill out of a re-entrant, while a depression
will turn into a pond if it rains enough.
- Regional Association
- Nine of twelve groups which make up BOF
are the English Regional Associations. Their main
function is to co-ordinate local fixtures and regional
competitions. The local regional association for Mole
Valley is the SEOA.
- Regional (event)
- One of the functions of BOF is to
periodically change the names which indicate the
relative status of orienteering events. From May 2017,
run-of-the-mill National Ranking
events have been renamed from Level C
to "Regional". This is especially confusing as up to two
reorganisations ago, "Regional" events were the next
level up, with "District" being
used for this level. The appropriateness of this grade
name inflation can be judged from the fact that there
are often simultaneous "Regional" events taking place
within a single BOF region. Also
referred to as Colour-coded events
(a name which officially disappeared three
re-organisations ago).The next level up is now "National" event, and the lower
level is now "Local" event.
- Registration
- The area (normally a couple of parked cars) where
entry fees are collected, and control cards,
control descriptions, and (if
master maps are being used)
maps are given out.
If the event is using electronic punching,
then it will be at registration that your details are
loaded on to the event computer. The most important
rule in electronic orienteering is that once
registered, you must visit the download
before leaving the event, even if for some reason you
decide not to go round your course after all.
There will be event officials at Registration to help
you; if you don't know what to do, ask!
- Relay event
- A team event, usually for three people. Each person
runs a separate course, or lap. Relays always have a mass start for the first lap. Each
subsequent runners starts when the previous team member
finishes.
Each team will collectively run the same distance,
and eventually visit the same controls. However, the
courses for each team will be varied, or gaffled, so that different teams
visit the controls in different sequences, thus
preserving some requirement to navigate rather than
follow the person in front.
Relay entries are usually made by one person on
behalf of the whole club; in Mole Valley this would be
the club captain.
- Relocation
- Perhaps the most important skill in orienteering,
relocation means finding out where you are after having
got lost.
- Relocating Feature
- A distinct feature that may be used by competitors to
identify their position both on the ground and the map.
- Ride
- A linear gap in trees, usually for forestry management
purposes.
- RMOC
- Royal Marines Orienteering Club.
- Rogaine
- Long distance score orienteering
event, usually with a 24-hour time limit. Competitors
have the choice of continuing without sleeping,
returning to a central base to sleep, carrying a tent,
or sleeping rough.
- RR
- Roxburgh Reivers. A Scottish club. Web site.
- Route choice
- The option of taking more than one (sensible) route
between two controls. This may, for example, be a direct
cross-country route versus a longer path route, or going
straight over the top of a hill versus contouring round it.
- Run
- A technical term meaning to go around a course. No
particular gait is implied; you can walk for the whole
of your run!
- Run Up
- At events where there are different courses for
different age classes, it is
usually permissible to ¨run up¨ on the course for a
class which is closer to M21. Thus juniors can run up in
a class for older juniors or M21's, veterans can run up
in a class for younger seniors; and ladies can run up in
mens classes.
- SARUM
- A South Wiltshire club. Web site.
- Sarum Saunter
- The name SARUM give to their
biggest event each year.
- Saturday Series
- Any group of events on Saturdays, but in particular a
regular program of limited
colour-coded events run by Saxons and DFOK as a
league. Members of other clubs are welcome, but need to
join SAX or DFOK
as local members to score
points in the league.
- SAX
- Saxons orienteering club, based in Kent. Mole Valley's
neighbours to the east. Web site.
- Saxons Shield
- The name SAX give to their biggest
event each year.
- SBOC
- Swansea Bay Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Scale
- The ratio between distance on the map and distance on
the ground. A scale of 1:10,000 means that 1cm (about
the length of the nail on your little finger) on your
map shows 100m on the ground (around the length of a
football pitch). The scale should be printed in the
¨white space¨ around the edge of the map, probably next
to the contour interval.
- SCOA
- South-Central Orienteering Association. The regional association for Berkshire,
Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, and Oxfordshire. Web site.
- Score event
- An event in which the competitor does not have to
visit all the controls! There is a time limit, instead
of a set course. Points are scored for visiting
controls, and deducted for finishing over the time
limit. The competitor has to decide which controls to
visit, in which sequence. A watch is a vital item of
equipment for a score event!
- Scottish 6-Days
- Immensely popular biannual multi-day
event held in August in odd-numbered years,
comprising six Level B events in
seven days, on different areas. Held in a different part
of Scotland each time. Web site.
- SEF
- Standard Entry Form. Most events which require entry
in advance will accept a Standard Entry Form in the
post. Must be accompanied by a cheque! Used to need to
be accompanied by one or two stamped addressed envelopes
for final details and results to be posted to you. These
days, most people prefer to enter over the internet
without using paper. A blank Standard Entry Form may be
downloaded from the British Orieneering
web site.
- SEGOL
- Southern England GPS
Orienteering League.
- SEJS
- South-East Junior Squad. A group of young orienteers
selected by the SEOA for coaching
and representative competition. Web site.
- SELOC
- South-East Lancashire Orienteering Club. Web
site.
- SENiLe
- South-East NIght LEague. Formerly an annual series of
low-key night orienteering events
held over the autumn/winter/spring season, usually on
Saturday evenings. SENiLe's disappeared around 2007, but
there is now a Kent Night Cup series
on (usually) Thursday evenings.
- SEOA
- South-East Orienteering Association. Our local regional association. A definitive
list of member clubs is hard to come by, but my attempt
follows (including some which are ¨shared¨ with other
regions). The open member clubs may
be Mole Valley, CHIG, DFOK, GO, HAVOC, HH, LOK, MDDXO, SAX, SLOW, SN & SO, and the
closed clubs may be BAOC & RAFO.
Web
site.
- SEOUL
- Southern England
Urban Orienteering League.
- Short course
- At Level A, and some Level B events, adult competitors
usually have a choice of Long
and Short age class courses.
These should be of equal difficulty, and in theory are
of equal merit. However, almost all of the top
orienteers will run Long in preference to Short. (At Level A Events and above, there may
also be an elite course for M21
and W21.)
Short races are normally only taken seriously when
they do not clash with a longer course at the same
event. This is often the case in international
competitions, when classic and
short races on different days are equally prestigious.
- SI
- SportIdent
- SIAC
- SportIdent Air Card
- Silva
- Manufacturers of orienteering equipment. Web site.
- Silver standard
- The standard which you need to achieve three times on
age class courses at Level A events in order to qualify
for a Silver badge. Details are on a British
Orienteering web page.
- Ski-O
- Ski Orienteering. Orienteering on skis. Requires more
snow than normally available in the South-East. An IOF web page
has information.
- SLOG
- Swindon Locality Orienteering Group, defunct, having
merged with MOK in 2005 to form NWO.
- SLOW
- South London Orienteers and Wayfarers. A club, Mole
Valley's neighbours to the north-east, based in
Wimbledon. Infamous for painting their name in roads all
over the country. Web site.
- SMOC
- South Midlands Orienteering Club. Web site.
- SN
- Southern Navigators orienteering club. Mole Valley's
neighbours to the north-west. Cover the far NW of
Surrey, NE Hampshire, & S Berkshire. The south's
first orienteering club, formed by Chris Brasher and
John Disley in 1965. Web site.
- Snail Trail Trophy
- The name HAVOC give to their
biggest event each year.
- SO
- Southdowns Orienteers. A club, Mole Valley's
neighbours to the south. Web site.
- Southdowns Trophy
- The name SO give to their biggest
event each year.
- SOA
- Scottish Orienteering Association. The national association for the far
north. More powerful than it's eleven ¨equals¨ making up
BOF; more like a mini-BOF in it's own right. Web site.
- SOC
- Southampton Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Society Journal
- The Mole Valley club newsletter, posted to members
approximate quarterly.
- SOFA
- Shedfield Orienteering and Footslogging Association. A
club, based in south-east Hampshire. Defunct?
- SOGaloppen
- A Galoppen run by SO! A series of limited colour-coded Saturday
morning events run as a league for Southdowns members.
Members of other clubs who attend regularly are expected
to join Southdowns as local
members.
- SOLWAY
- Solway Orienteers. A club from south-west Scotland. Web site.
- SOS
- Essex Stragglers Orienteering Society. Believed to be
the only club besides Mole Valley to call itself a
Society. Web site.
- South-East Galoppen
- The South-East Galoppen is an individual galoppen competition for members
of clubs affiliated to the SEOA.
Uses the same events as the South-East League,
but unlike the League, it runs over each calendar year.
There is a separate competition for each course; that
is, not just is each age class
scored separately, but also Long and Short or A and B
courses have their own ranking lists. The first member
of a SEOA club on each course at each event gets 100
points, the second 99 points, and so on. The points
accumulated at the various events over the year are
added to give the individuals total. It is not
necessary to run absolutely every event, since the
number of events which count is slightly smaller than
the total. For example, if there are six SE League
events during the year, the Galoppen will take the
best five scores.
- South-East League
-
 The South-East League is an annual
competition between the member clubs of the SEOA. The SEOA committee choose which
events will form part of the League, usually picking all
the Level B events scheduled for
the region. The League is contested over each
autumn/winter/spring season.
Individual orienteers score points for their runs. At
each event, the points scored by the members of each
club are aggregated to give club scores. The clubs are
then ranked in order of their scores. Finally,
South-East League points are allocated to the clubs
based on the club order from the event. At the end of
the season, the club with most points is the winner.
Anyone completing any course at any South-East League
event scores at least one point. Runs on the string course, colour-coded courses,
and slow completions of age class
courses score one point. Faster runs on age class
courses score points according to how fast the
individual has done against a target speed.
An SEOA web page has further details. Fortunately you
do not need to memorise the scoring formulae before
running at a League event!
- South-East Team Score
- An annual score event at which
individual members' points are used to score an
inter-club competition. Each club gets the aggregate
points of its top twelve individual scorers from
different age classes. The
¨different classes¨ requirement stops the competition
being dominated by the younger adult males, and for most
clubs means that almost all their younger, older, or
female members have a significant chance of contributing
to the club score.
The rules provide for ¨automatic running-up¨, which
basically means that club captains don't have to worry
about picking team or asking people to enter running-up an age class. Instead,
the organiser will use the event results to select the
twelve people, with running-up, who give each club the
best score.
For example, if a club has two M40 runners who are
both expected to outscore all their M35's, without
automatic running-up, the club captain would have to
ask one of the M40's to enter as M35. With automatic
running-up, he doesn't have to worry, and if both
M40's do beat the M35's, then it will be the two M40
scores that count.
- South-East Veterans Trophy
- An annual competition open to members of SEOA-affiliated clubs, held at a Mole
Valley District event,
usually in the autumn. Unusually, ¨veteran¨
for this competition means age
classes M40 or W40 and older. The gentlemens'
competition is held on the Blue
course, the ladies' on the Green.
In recent years, a ¨family¨ competition for
related entrants has been held at the same event. New
classes for M60+ (on Green)
and W60+ (Short Green) were added
in 2010.
- Southern England GPS Orienteering
League
- A virtual orienteering league.
The Southern England GPS Orienteering League started in
October 2020 in response to COVID-19 restrictions and
the cancellation of the 2020 SEOUL.
Web site.
- Southern England Urban
Orienteering League
- Annual league of urban
events, mostly full-length rather than sprint. A local
version of the UK Urban League. Web site.
- Southern Express
- Sadly defunct series of short races held at monthly
intervals in the spring in the South-East.
- Spanish score event
- A score event at which the
competitors do have to visit all the controls! The
person with the fastest time wins. The difference
between this and a normal cross-country
orienteering event is that the controls may be visited
in any order.
- Split Starts
- At events where start times are allocated in advance,
parents may request ¨split¨ early and late starts,
hopefully meaning that one of them is always available
to look after the children.
- Split Times
- A results display showing the times taken over each
individual leg.
- SportIdent
 One
of two competing forms of electronic punching equipment,
replacing the traditional paper control card
and needle punch. With SportIdent,
you carry a ¨dibber¨ (illustrated) strapped to your
index finger, which you poke into a hole in a metal box
at the control site. The box then bleeps and flashes to
acknowledge your presence. SportIdent is more popular
than the rival Emit system in
Britain. Web site.
If you have one of the newest SportIdent ¨Air¨ cards,
and the organiser has enabled the equipment to work in
contactless ¨beacon¨ mode, then you don't even need to
poke your dibber into the hole, just bringing it within
an inch or so should record your presence.
- Springtime in Shropshire
- Biannual event held over the late May Bank Holiday
weekend in odd-numbered years, usually comprising three
Level B events on different areas
in Shropshire. Web site.
- Sprint orienteering
- Ultra-short distance orienteering, likely to be
planned for a winning time of 12 minutes. Note that this
is still far too long for what a track athlete would
regard as a sprint. A sprint course is characterised by
very short legs and changes of
direction, requiring quick thinking. ¨A sprint for the
mind rather than for the body¨. Sprint events are
usually, but not invariably, urban.
- SROC
- South Ribble Orienteering Club, based in North
Lancashire. England's first orienteering club, founded
1964. Web
site.
- STAG
- St Andrew's Glasgow Orienteering Club. A Scottish
club. Web site.
- Start
- The beginning of your orienteering course, the point
at which your time starts. There will be event officials
at the Start to help you; if you don't know what to do,
ask!
- Start Triangle
- The point where the course marked on
your map starts, marked on the ground by a control kite with no punches. Normally, this
will be very close to the real start
of your course, but occasionally you will have to follow
a taped route. Often you need to
find a map between the Start
and the Start Triangle, either a Master Map
which you need to copy your course from, or a pre-marked map which you must
take with you.
- Street Orienteering
- An event on public roads and footpaths, rather than in
the countryside. May be anything from a World
Championship short course to
low-key club training. In the latter case, probably score event, with no kites or
punches, competitors taking a pen or pencil and writing
down answers to simple questions at each control.
- String course
- An orienteering course for children too young to read
a map reliably. Although a map will be provided, a
string or thin rope is laid out along the ground as a
guide. The start of the string course will normally be
in a different place to the starts of other courses, so
make sure you follow the right signs.
- Stub
- A tear-off strip on a paper control card.
Frequently used as a safety check to ensure that all
orienteers have returned from the forest.
The stub is collected from the competitor at the start,
and then matched with the control card after that has
been handed in at the finish. If any unmatched stubs are
left at the end of the event, this should mean that an
injured orienteer is lying out in the forest.
(Alternatively, it may mean that some naughty person has
gone home without reporting to the finish.)
- SUFFOC
- Suffolk Orienteering Club. Web
site.
- SWOA
- South-Western Orienteering Association. The regional association for South-West
England. Web site.
- SWOC
- South Wales Orienteering Club. Web site.
- SYO
- South Yorkshire Orienteers. A club. Web site.
- Tamar Triple
- Biannual event held over the late May Bank Holiday
weekend in even-numbered years, usually comprising three
events on different areas in the far south-west.
Organised by the KERNO and DEVON clubs. Web site.
- Taped route
- A route for you to follow, marked with lengths of
plastic tape. There may be a continuous length of tape,
or there may merely be fragments hung intermittently
from bushes. Taped routes are likely to lead you from
the car park to the Start and from
the Finish back to the car park.
You may also have to follow a taped route as part of
your course, most commonly from the last control to the
Finish.
The colour of the tapes used varies, but should not
be yellow or black. Yellow or yellow/black tapes have
a very specific meaning in orienteering; they indicate
danger, such as the top of a cliff. It is not usually
a good idea to follow them!
- TAY
- Tayside Orienteers. A club. Web site.
- TCA
- Trail Cyclist Association. Defunct name for British Mountain Bike Orienteering.
- Technical Difficulty
- Grading of difficulty, ranging from 1 (easy) to 5
(very hard). A table in this British Orienteering document
explains technical difficulty in more detail.
- TempO
- A form of Trail Orienteering
decided on entirely on time. Still not a race, in the
sense that there is no running between controls.
However, the time taken to solve each control problem is
recorded, and a time penalty is added for getting the
answer wrong. Fastest time (after penalties) wins,
meaning that fast and nearly always right beats slow and
right all the time. Further details on this British Orienteering web page
(scroll down past PreO).
- Thetford Thrash
- Annual pair (Saturday & Sunday) of Level B events named for Thetford
Forest, usually organised by two different EAOA clubs.
 Thumb compass- A small compass which is worn
strapped on to the thumb of the hand carrying the map.
- Tim Watkins Trophy
- The British Blodslitet.
- Timed start
- A confusing term, since your time is not recorded when
you start, like it would be for a punching start. Instead,
your course time will be calculated on the assumption
that you started at exactly the moment allocated to you
by the event organiser. If you are late starting, the
delay will be added to your run time. The start
officials should ensure that you do not start early!
- TINTO
- Tinto Orienteers. A club named for a hill near
Edinburgh. Web site.
- Traders
- ¨Traders¨ in event information indicates the presence
of vendors of orienteering equipment such as Compass Point and/or a mobile
catering van.
- Trail challenge
- A type of orienteering aimed at introducing road and
track runners into the sport. A mass
start event with control sites of technical
difficulty appropriate for a yellow
course, route choice problems of orange
standard, but much longer than either of these; there
has been a half-marathon (21km) trail challenge.
- Trail Orienteering
- A type of orienteering originally invented for the
disabled, but equally difficult and challenging for the
able-bodied. Instead of one control
kite at each control, there are several and the
competitor has to study the map to decide which is in
the right place. The event is not a race; the winner
will be the person who most often identifies the correct
control flag. The competitor is not allowed right up to
the control site, but has to study it from a distance.
The route between the controls, or rather between the
points from which the controls are viewed, must be
suitable for wheelchairs.
- IOF web pages provide a basic introduction. Further
information, in particular the difference between
traditional TrailO, now called PreO, and the newer
¨sprint¨ version, called TempO, is
on this British Orienteering web page. A
more detailed guide to techniques (5MB) can be found here,
but note that it is quite old and pre-dates TempO.
- New British Orienteering TrailO website.
- Triple O Severn
- Intermittent multiday event somewhere near the River
Severn over the first May bank holiday, typically a full
length event on the Sunday, preceded by a shorter
distance race on Saturday and followed by some sort of
relay on Monday. BOK always seem to
be involved, sometimes assisted by NGOC
or SARUM.
- TVOC
- Thames Valley Orienteering Club. Web site.
- Twin Peaks
- Annual two-day event organised by MDOC.
Usually two Level B events,
sometimes one of them is Level A.
- Tyvek
- Waterproof and tear resistant paper once used for control cards.
- UKEOL
- UK Elite Orienteering League
- UK Elite Orienteering League
- Annual series of races for elite
orienteers. Web site. The Elite League usually
picks courses from normal events, so novice orienteers
shouldn't avoid an event just because there's an elite
race.
- UKOL
- UK Orienteering League
- UK Orienteering League
- Annual series of races to encourage competition at
major events. Around 20 events spread throughout the
year and across the country, featuring a range of
competition formats and terrain types. A competitor’s
overall score will be their best 10 or so event scores.
Separate prize for each BOF class. Web page.
- UKUL
- UK Urban League
- UK Urban League
- Annual national league of urban events,
mostly full-length rather than sprint. Like the UKOL,
they'll be about 20 spread through the year and across
the country, but all will be in an urban evrionment -
usually streets but occasionally a university campus or
similar park. Website.
- Ultrasport
- Vendor of orienteering equipment, with a stall at
every major event and many minor events. Web site.
Sadly now ceased trading after retirement of owner.
- Ultrasprint
- Really short orienteering event, even shorter than a
normal sprint. Usually containing
a maze section made up crowd-control barriers or
similar. Probably more than one race in the competition
so that you do run for more than a few minutes. The
normal rule about control separation does not apply, and
you are likely to get controls on each side of a tree,
with a time penalty rather than disqualification if you
punch the wrong one.
- Urban
- Traditionally, orienteering events have taken place in
forests, or possibly open areas such as sand dunes or
moorland, but definitely in the countryside. In recent
years, events in town and city streets and parks have
become popular. The first urban events tended to be sprints, but now full-length urban
events are quite common.
- UsynligO
- A mobile phone app onto which you download a course
file. The phone buzzes and vibrates when its detects
that you have reached a control. Website.
Youtube video. See also MapRun. Usynlig means invisible in
Norwegian, reflecting the fact that there is no visible
trace of the O course in the terrain.
- Velvet Flyer
- The trophy presented to the fastest man at the Mole
Valley club championship, contested annually at a
colour-coded event. Traditionally run over the longest
available course, but in recent years a Blue
course has been chosen to allow the more elderly or less
fit to join in.
Also a frequently used name for a Mole Valley relay team.
- Veteran
- Someone who has already reached the year of his or her
35th birthday, i.e. age class
M35, W35, or older. Some competitions use different
definitions, for example the Southern Express
veterans classes are for M/W45+.
- VHI
- Veteran Home Internationals. Annual event for teams of
veterans from England, Wales, Scotland
& Northern Ireland.
- Virtual orienteering course
- A course with no control markers. You download the
course onto your mobile phone or smart watch using an
app like Maprun or Usynligo. The phone/watch then
buzzes and vibrates when it detects that you have
reached a control. Virtual courses can be used at any
time; you don't need to wait for an event. They have
become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they
permit competitions to take place without people coming
close to each other or sharing physical infrastructure
such as control punches. No doubt they will continue to
be popular for low-key events even after normal life
resumes, as there is no need to put out or take in
controls, or to run on a particular day.
- VOC
- Virtual Orienteering Course
- WAOC
- West Anglian Orienteering Club. Web site.
- WAROC
- Warrior. An orienteering club based in the Lake
District. Web site.
- WASH
- What orienteers need after a run!
Formerly also Wash orienteering club, which merged with
NORwich to form NORfolk Orienteering
Club early in the current century.
- WCH
- Walton Chasers orienteering club. Based in South
Staffordshire. Web site.
- WCOC
- West Cumberland Orienteering Club. Web site.
- White
- Slang term for the runnable forest indicated by the
absence of any colouration on the map.
- White course
- The shortest and easiest colour-coded
course. Route should be entirely along paths and tracks,
with a control at every decision point. May not
always be provided, in which case the easiest course
would be Yellow.
- White Rose
- One of the longest standing regular events in Britain,
this is a three-day event organised by EBOR
on the North Yorkshire Moors every August Bank Holiday
since 1972. The first two days feature Level B
events, the third some form of team event, possibly a Harris Relay. Unusually, teams are
not restricted to members of the same club. In recent
years, sprint, night
and mountain-bike events have been
added, so if you have the energy you can do six events
in three days. Web site.
- WIGHTO
- The orienteering club for the Isle of Wight. Now
almost the only club still using traditional paper control cards and pin punches. Web
site.
- Wilf's
- Much-missed travelling caterer renowned for their
vegetarian chilli and pasta. Now sadly given up visiting
orienteering events to concentrate on running their
famous café at Staveley. Web site.
- WIM
- Wimborne Orienteers. A Dorset club. Web site.
- Window Course
- Course with a modified map occasionally found at a
training event or activity. Instead of the whole map
being printed, only a small area around each control
will be shown, with blank areas inbetween the controls.
This will force you to practise navigating by following
a compass bearing and keeping
track of distance travelled, probably by pace-counting. It will probably give
you relocation practise too!
- Winter Warmer
- The name WIM give to their biggest
event each year.
- WMOA
- West Midlands Orienteering Association. The regional association
for the West Midlands. Web site.
- WMOC
- World Masters Orienteering Championship. Annual event
to find a world champion in each age class
from M/W35 upwards. There is no selection, so you don't
have to be any good to enter. There are two qualifying
days, and then a finals day. Although everyone gets the
chance to run in a final, you may (depending on your
age) have to be pretty useful to reach the ¨A¨ final,
the winner of which becomes the World Champion. There
are usually several Moles competing each year, although
none of us has won yet.
- WOA
- Welsh Orienteering Association. The national association
for Wales. Web site.
- WOC (1)
- World Orienteering Championships. An IOF
event for elite orienteers selected by national
federations, now held annually. Britain has had two
World Champions, Yvette Baker won the short distance class in 1999, and
Jamie Stevenson won the sprint
class in 2003.
- WOC (2)
- World Orienteering Cup. Another IOF
event for selected elite orienteers, this one takes
place at several venues throughout the year. Less
prestigious than the World Championships, but arguably
harder to win.
- WRE (1)
- Wrekin orienteers. A Shropshire club. Web site.
- WRE (2)
- World Ranking Event. An event for which the results
count in the international ranking list.
There are just two lists, one for men and one for women,
with no split between age classes. At an age class event, world ranking
points are only available on the M21E
and W21E courses or equivalents. An IOF web site has
details.
- WSX
- Wessex Orienteering Club. Web site.
- WYE
- Formerly Wye Valley orienteers, merged with Harlequins Orienteering Club early in
the current century.
- W10, W12, W21, W70, etc
- Age classes for women.
- W10A, W12A, W18A, etc
- “A” courses for girls.
- W10B, W12B, W18B, etc
- “B” courses for girls.
- W20E, W21E
- “Elite” courses for women.
- W21L, W35L, W75L, etc
- “Long” courses for women.
- W21S, W35S, W75S, etc
- “Short” courses for women.
- Xenu
- Not an orienteering term, but an excellent piece of
free software used (not as often as it should be) to
check this web page for ¨broken links¨, i.e. out of date
Internet addresses. Web site.
- Yellow course
- A fairly short and fairly easy colour-coded
course. Longer and harder than White,
shorter and easier than Orange.
The route should be obvious, following line features such as paths,
fences, or streams. Controls
should be on the feature being followed.
- YHOA
- Yorkshire & Humberside Orienteering Association.
The regional
association for the old county of Yorkshire. Web site.
- Yvette Baker Trophy
- An annual English inter-club competition for juniors,
a sort of junior CompassSport Cup.
Named after Britain's best-ever orienteer, who was World
Champion in 1999. Competition rules in a British Orienteering document.
Yvette Baker Trophy matches are normally held at District events that are open to
adults too.
- Zzzz
- Noise likely to be made by someone attempting to read
this entire web page in one go!
 Mole Valley Orienteering
Club
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