British Orienteering Championships 2022Surrey, 26-27 March

This year’s British Championships weekend was in the far south of England, and very few ESOC competitors made the long journey south.

The 2022 British Orienteering Championships were held near Liphook in Surrey, postponed from 2020. The Long Distance race was on Saturday 26 March and the Relays were on Sunday 27 March.

The Long Distance event was at Golden Valley & Cognor Wood. The Final Details described the area as “very varied, ranging from relatively flat semi-wooded heathland to steep slopes with chestnut coppice and pine plantations”, and explained that there was considerable debris and fallen trees from recent storms. The area was split by a road and out-of-bounds fields, and many courses had long legs crossing to the other part of the area. Most courses had a lot of climb.

Rona Lindsay commented: “It was a lovely sunny day in the South for the British long champs. The terrain was a mix of flatter plateau and steeper slope, with variable runnability depending on how many brambles and sticks there were on the ground. There were also some man-eating marshes around; one of my controls was in a knee deep bog! Personal highlight has to be the alpacas in the field by the road crossing.”

ESOC results:
M60L (61 competitors) – Richard Oxlade 16th
M75L (36) – Brian Yates 31st
W21E (14) – Rona Lindsay 9th
W60S (7) – Anne Hoy 6th
W65L (29) – Janice Nisbet 10th

The Relay event was at Iron Hill & Parkgate Rough, which overlapped with the previous day’s area, and used the same arena. As ESOC had so few competitors at the event, it wasn’t possible to enter any teams in the Relay.

Results are available on the MDOC website:
  Individual
  Relays
Routegadget is in the BOC Routegadget archive:
  Individual
  Relays
Photos – Individual event:
  by Wendy Carlyle
  by Robert Lines
Photos – Relays:
  by Robert Lines

The Long Distance race was the 11th event in the 2022 UK Orienteering League. With the score for this event included, ESOC was lying 23rd in the club league.

Other entries categorised under: Event Reports