With much sadness we report the death of Pam Swienton after a fight against cancer. Pam may not be well known to everyone in the Club but for many years she has been an absolute mainstay of the work we have done promoting orienteering in schools in Salisbury and across S. Wiltshire and the Avon Valley. Pam and the Club came together when she was Schools Sports Co-ordinator for the Trafalgar Schools cluster. Thanks to her hard work a thriving programme of schools events was established. So successful were these events that Pam suggested we set up a competitive League, made up of as many schools as she could muster, in order to get children out of the school environs and into the forest to experience ‘real’ orienteering. From this idea came the Salisbury Schools Forest league in which eight local schools compete annually. The events are run by the Club but Pam did great work liaising with and cajoling the schools to send teams even though her official schools sports co-ordinator role had been subject to government cuts. Pam and husband Andy were at every event to support the Sarum team. The Forest League continues to provide excitement and challenge to primary schools children in the Salisbury area and is very much a part of Pam’s sporting Legacy. The concept that Pam helped develop with Sarum Orienteers’ small ‘Schools Team’ is spreading with the Club now putting on school grounds and forest events for primary schools in the Warminster and W. Wiltshire area.
Pam was always generous in her thanks to the Club post every schools event but the Club owes her an enormous debt of gratitude for her inspiring work in helping us give primary school children a taste of the fun and freedom of navigating round a forest course without the usual close supervision that is so much a part of modern school life. The Forest League and other schools outreach programmes will continue and the happy faces of the children at the Finish will remind us of all that Pam contributed to schools’ sports and to orienteering.