Last night we started in the south east corner of the city.
For those who are not familiar, with Adelaide, South Australia (my home city) this needs a bit of a description.
The city of Adelaide was a planned city, laid out in 1837 by Colonel William Light.
The city mile is surrounded by park lands, and adjoins North Adelaide also has park lands surrounding it. The Torrens river runs through between the city centre and North Adelaide (beside the famous Adelaide Oval of cricket fame).
Just for interest here is an old 1840 map of the city so you can get the idea. On this map the purchasers of the acre blocks are written.
The parklands are preserved for recreational purposes and mostly open to the public. There are a few sporting club rooms, and the old Victoria racecourse, the swimming centre etc, but mosly it is just open land with scattered trees, walking and bike tracks.
Where we were orienteering last night was the bottom right hand (south eastern corner of the city. This area has a mix of buildings ranging from original old terrace cottages on narrow laneways, large old houses with their grounds around them, and newer apartments (also with narrow driveways and lanes) , all still just a short stroll from the parklands.
We started from the parklands and headed immediately into the roads and laneways of the residential area. Of the four varies courses on offer I chose to take on the medium length (about 4.5km). My knee has been a bit of a problem, and I'm trying to give it a chance to recover by not pushing it too hard, so I figured this distance would be manageable, even if I needed to walk most of it.
Close to the start was what I considered the best leg on my course. At control 4 we were faced with an excellent route choice. this sort of puzzle is what keeps me so keen on orienteering. Not only does it give my body some much needed exercise, but it challenges my mind to quickly decide the best route choice.
The idea is to get from 4 to 5 in the quickest time (thus finding the shortest route is the quest).
The trick here was that there was a dark line on the route between the two. This indicates an impassable barrier. Those who did not notice this headed up the side of the narrow (grey) buildings and found themselves at a dead end. They wasted some valuable seconds doing this, then had to turn around and backtrack.
All were faced with an excellent challenge in working out how best to get to the next control. There was no choice but to head back out to the street, but once on the street there were two choices.
You could turn left (heading west) , to the second opening on your left, go down the laneways between the buildings, past the garage (lighter gray) , slip between the narrow opening between 2 buildings and turn left again to run down to the control.
Alternatively you could turn right, go all the way down to the street bordering the parklands, run along to the right, either skip through between the building doing a left turn on the way , or staying straight until the next road, go up the road a little way, and then head in the narrow lane way to the garage area and find the control.
When you are trying to make a decision quickly while running it is not always easy. It is hard to calculate which route is longer, and with the map jigging up and down in front of you as you run, it can be tricky to see where you can get through and where you can not.
The other challenge that I particularly enjoyed last night was when we emerged from the buildings into the parklands and had to find a control in there. I was not using my compass , so I had to really concentrate on the leg between 8 and 9 as I emerged from the buildings.
I've been caught before in this circumstance, and I was very aware of the fact that I find it difficult to change my thinking from the tight streets and buildings to the open land, where you really have to think hard about your direction and distance. The long grass hid the control itself, although the vegetation was of some help (the green patches show the thicker vegetation) . I was happy with the way I managed the change of thinking last night and really enjoyed that challenge as well.
Thanks Stefano for an excellent course, and to all the helpers who made it happen.
