Category: Orienteering

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French Road Trip – French 3 Days

We have an aversion to Scottish JKs (big UK Easter Orienteering Festival), when I lived down south it was too far, the weather is often iffy at Easter and there always seems to be a nice alternative somewhere warmer. This year we were trying to go to Spain, but could just not get any info on the event. In the end Cath discovered a French ‘3 Jours de Paques’, just north of Bordeaux on the l’île d’Oléron.. Sand dune forests, French food, what more could we ask.

http://3jours2012.club-co17.com/index.html

Im not sure it was a great decision to go for just the weekend and drive! meaning it turned into a bit of a major road trip (1600 mile weekend) but overall we had a great time and I believe the orienteering was OK too (cath’s map shown) The area was actually quite runnable and not as green as the map suggests.

The club took 3 cars out and stayed in a posh resort caravan park with a fantastic spa pool we all lazed in when not visiting light houses, orienteering or eat ice creams and crepes. The 3 juniors who came out did us proud and it was a struggle to get the 8 trophy’s into the car for the return journey.

I had a word with my physio before I went (he was really not happy about the drive) and said that I could take a bike a go for a few poodles for my mental health rather than just sitting there moaning. In the end I had 3, 45 minute, lane and forest road rides on the Whyte E5 and I am starting to like it. I still wonder whether it is slightly too big for me and that I might need a small but overall its good, particularly pedalling over the bumpy stuff. The rest of the time I took photos and enjoyed the slightly windy sunshine thinking of friends getting cold and wet in Scotland!

 

 

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Sorry for the lack of Postings !

Apologies to my avid readers for my lack of posting, life has been rather hectic. The area of Architecture and IT I work in (BIM or Building Information Modelling) has become an extremely hot topic over the last few months and I am stretched somewhat dealing with it all. I seem to be giving presentations up and down the country every other day! I have also started tweeting a fair bit possibly some of the stuff I might normally do little mini blog postings about.

For those on twitter I am @stodgeblog

So hopefully this will be the first of a flurry of small blog postings but expect a few things slightly different from the norm as I am still not back on the bike so am up to other stuff !

I have cleared out the garage recently (didn’t do my back much good) so as to make easier access for all Orienteering kit we look after for the club but also for access to my Spitfire, a new turbo trainer setup and even a workbench which will make bike maintenance easier. Cath has commented recently that a side effect of my injury is the poor state of service of her bike (that’s me told).

With getting the spitfire on the road I obviously addressed the most important item before bothering with the MOT, that of carrying a bike. It really does show quite how small the spitfire is. I am looking forward to getting to a few of the later Dark and White events if my back gets fixed in time using the spitfire to enjoy the White Peak views.

 

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British 2012 MTBO league kicks off on Feb 19th

The first round of the UKs national MTBO league kicks off in two weeks time at Gilling woods in North Yorkshire on 19th Feb
http://www.bmbo.org.uk/calendar/details.php?event_id=291

Last time we all gathered at Gilling it was somewhat ….. overplanned
see my report here from 2009, including the maps – http://www.stodgell.co.uk/?p=566 but it is an excellent area with steep long climbs to punish those who get the route choices wrong.

The league is somewhat down on events this year for various reasons so please support the events that are on.