The practice of marshes ( long model event and Volvos)

Today was a rest day.  ( well....sort of)

We had a lovely sleep in till about 8am-much needed.

Then car pooled to the model event for the long races. This was held in a park area which borders the botanical gardens and we were treated to views of many trees that we hadn't seen before... but that's not all.

Our course today at the model event

The map for the model event gave us a choice of controls to find,  and we stayed with Bo and Kirsten which was very helpful.  We took some route choices between controls that would help us to understand the mapping and hopefully help us in the next few days.

This is the part of the map that we used. Our start was at the triangle. 

We travelled to 40, 37, 31, 44, 43 and 38 in just over 4 km and took almost 2 hours! 

Our first  leg was almost directly up the hill and over from the start

The yellow line shows our approximate course as remembered by us now. The first lesson in cutting up the hill was that the rock is very slippery.  Much of what we expected to be mapped as bare rock  is not mapped-and it often is shown as open scattered ( yellow and white splotches) .  Bare rock has to be very open and appears to be only on the tops of the ridges-although we did find some mapped on a slope also.
The marshes -both linear and wider have different vegetation-and the colour helps to identify them.  The larger marshes with the unbroken blue lines have what looks like very thick moss -but you may sink in to it- making running difficult.

There are a lot  of rocks not shown on the map due to their size-lower than 1m .

The marsh crossing between 37 and 31 was an interesting experience- it looks somewhat yellow on the ground -so you can pick it through the trees, but when you walk on it it is like a thick layer of foam-until you break through. At one stage my weight was too much for the surface and I went in up to my knee. I was possibly lucky not to lose my shoe in  the smelly slime beneath.
The single pair of orienteering pants which I brought are in the wash again tonight due to this incident. -the lesson is that this route choice can be used-but will not be a fast option.

Shoes as we finished the model event today... yuk! I am not sure that they will be dry by tomorrow.

We found this model event quite tiring, but also quite instructive. Definitely worth doing. 

Once we had dried off and changed our clothes we once again followed the instructions of the GPS towards he Volvo museum, stopping on the way for a meal of the day lunch -which was a huge workers lunch at a cafe in the local industrial area. We couldn't believe the serving sizes. We had the largest yiros we had ever had, and 2 of the others had pizzas the size of a large pizza plus a bit. All for 75 SEK ( about 12 dollars in Australian money) All of us left food on our plates.

Then off to a riveting visit to the Volvo Museum, where we admired the many examples of cars through the ages, boat engines, trucks, buses, etc that Volvo make. There was also a good display about the Volvo ocean race and the Volvo golf tournament. 

 Volvo car made of lego

Volvo tractor

This sign amused me-we've seen lots of farts on our visit here- but this was the first toppfart
Personally I think Trevor managed one like this the other night.

Had to take this photo for my brother in law Daryl -the Gibson collector. 

And so another day completes as we sit down to baked potatoes together for dinner.