Sarum Juniors had a great return to training after the Festive Season. The dark and cold nights demanded another indoor session which started off with Phil organising some energetic relay races to get everyone warmed up, including Mums.

After this everyone grabbed a pencil and a clue sheet for Phil’s map recognition competition which was aimed at learning to recognise and interpret features on an orienteering map. For this, twelve very different O-maps were stuck to the walls around the room and everyone had to try to match the small sections of map on the clue sheet to the correct O-map. This was made a bit more difficult by the scales of the small clue section and the main map being different. This kept everyone very busy as some of the tasks were quite tricky. Even the adults taking part had to think carefully. The one advantage that the youngsters had was sharp eyesight and they used this to great effect. In the end everyone managed to work out the correct associations. It was impressive to see how much concentration went into the exercise and how much the children helped one another. A discussion afterwards highlighted the easy and hard parts of understanding maps and everyone agreed they now had a better understanding of O-maps and what the various symbols meant. But this is just a beginning!

Next week we’re off to Harnham slope again for some fast running round the humps and bumps with a glowstick race. Do come along, you’ll enjoy it.