ESOC’S Lockdown ROUTEGADGET CHALLENGE!Improve your route choice skills
No problem if you haven’t used Routegadget before, just have a go!
Peter Halling has created “virtual” yellow and orange courses on the map of Corstorphine Hill and made these available on our ESOC RouteGadget page.
The idea is to go online and work out your route choices, then add them to the map. To be clear, these are not “real” courses. They have just been created for this purpose for you to enjoy and discuss between you!
You will find ESOC’S Routegadget here
PETER’S INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE EXERCISE:
An important skill for beginners and juniors at yellow and orange standard is to choose a route between controls, normally following line features. On a yellow course, there will usually only be one sensible route, so this is not what experienced orienteers call “route choice”. Rather, it’s about how to join up bits of path, fence etc. to make a route – where to turn off one path onto another, for example. The same applies at orange level, but here there may sometimes be a choice between two plausible routes as well.
The process of identifying the route can be practiced on a map at home. To offer some practice, we have mounted some maps with planned courses on the RouteGadget site. This site is often used by orienteers after an event to show the route they actually took. But you can also use it to show the route you would plan to take on a course that has not been set up on the ground. Select one of the exercise courses from the ESOC RouteGadget page, then go to the “Draw” tab to show the route you would select. You have to enter a name and time before it will let you start, but you then left click at successive points along your route – see outline instructions at the bottom of the left panel. Once you have completed the route to the finish, “Save” will be enabled and you can record your choices. Later you can if you wish look at routes that other people have selected.
Why not have a go?
For anyone who needs a bit of extra support there's a video to help here.