Katherine: British Orienteering is 50 years old.
To celebrate, we're taking a look back at how it was when it all began.
And we'll also be looking into the future
to see what orienteering could look like in 50 years time.
But first here's Carol McNeill with how British Orienteering began, 50 years ago today.
Carol: Scotland and England decided to join
because then they could enter a national team.
So I went up to the British Championships in Hamsterley Forest.
That was the first British Championships.
It was really good having people like Chris Brasher
who's a famous BBC journalist and wrote in the Observer
and he did quite a lot of articles selling orienteering.
John Disley, international steeplechaser. He had been in orienteering
oh, like forever.
Ian: There was Gordon Pirie running, now that's a big name
if you've got a chap who'd been a very successful Olympic
runner, World Record holder.
Carol: There would be newsletters sent out by post. No computers then.
And you'd decide to enter and enter it by post or enter on the day.
But at the start, you'd then have master maps
where you had to copy your course from the right master map on to your map
and there was lots of skill attached to this.
Ian: And you wanted to be off before the next person on the next minute was coming.
Well, in many cases you couldn't possibly
or it was very very difficult to copy the things accurately down.
Katherine: Maps have changed beyond recognition.
Ian: The mapping was very simple.
You simply went out and bought a 2 1/2 inch map
an then you were going to get a black and white photocopy of that.
We'd used a big depression in an area
but it wasn't marked on the map.
But where it was, you just drew the circle on the master map and that was it.
Carol: It was sort of doctored up and sometimes they'd enlarge it and put a scale on it.
And it was a sort of work of art.
'76, when the World Championships were in Scotland
Sue and Robin Harvey mapped for that World Championships
and then, their expertise developed, in mapping
and so then mapping really took off again in the mid 70s.
Dave: I can imagine that mapping will change in similar ways as it has in the past 40 or 50 years
and that's how much data is available to the cartographer, the surveyor.
If we look at urban mapping nowadays, we've got Google Streetview
lots of Ordnance Survey data, Lidar data,
and you can gather so much data to make a map.
You can almost produce a pretty good map without ever going out into the field.
I can see that changing into the forest environment
so you would be able to gather a lot of data
without ever going into the field.
And then with the advent of drones and things like that
I think there's a good chance the surveyor may never leave their office.
Katherine: Clothing has advanced in line with fashion.
Ian: Initially when people started, they'd just wear any old clothes
and you realised very quickly that it was advisable to run with studs
so quite a lot of people would have started with football boots
or hockey boots initially.
Carol: It was very loose and it was nylon.
You know, we picked up lots of tips from the Scandinavians.
You know, we'd go over to Scandinavia in the summer
and see what they were wearing, and think "oh that looks good,
we'll get some of that", and they were all a bit baggy.
And people would make their own with pockets for their whistles
and pen for the master maps.
Ian: If you're looking at shoes in the past, previously they were very uncomfortable
'cos they tend to be very heavy, no support,
there was stitching all over the place.
But for the future, I think we're going to go into just a mixture of
very lightweight, breatheable fabric, with lightweight mesh.
Katherine: Punching is now much easier.
Carol: In Sweden they were using these little stamps
and they were like self-inking stamps.
Ian: And you got a set if you were organising an event.
You press them down and it would have left a, in theory,
an indelible mark on your card.
Carol: And then that was the precursor of the pin punches.
The pin punches, I mean they lasted a long time
and we still use them for some events.
Martin: And then electronic punching was introduced about 20 years ago
and now for the first time at the JK, everybody
that's 60% of the participants are using the new contactless cards
and contactless punching is the future of orienteering.
Katherine: Paper results are out. It's all electronic now.
Carol: They'd put your name on a label and then stick it on
a slip of wood which then all had hooks so that they could
change the positions as people came in.
At big events, you'd leave an envelope
with your name and address on and
then the art of the organiser, or one of the skills
that people used to like to do was to get the results
photocopied and into the envelopes on the night of the event.
Ian: It was a major job.
The formal results you wouldn't get for
perhaps a week, sometimes two weeks or three weeks
after the event.
Martin: In terms of the future, maybe a little bit more effort
will go into GPS tracking, to try and make that more accessible at more events.
Katherine: The future is looking exciting.
Judith: I think the future of British Orienteering is being able to
go on adapting to some things that we maybe realise are here now
but things probably we can't even dream about yet.
Mike: I think orienteering's got a really strong future.
I think our challenge is that we rely tremendously on volunteers
without those volunteers there is no sport.
We intend spending quite a lot of time developing our
orienteers over the next 4-8 years.
Judith: I think one of the things that we will have is more variety.
I think the busy lives the younger generation have at the moment
mean that their every week orienteering
they don't want to travel too far
they've got too many other things going on.
So we need local hotspots with lots of local orienteering.
Carol: People just loved making it good for everybody,
I mean, like they still do, you know, we just
like making it into the best sport that we have.
Katherine: So there you have it, a little insight
into what British Orienteering has looked like
over the past 50 years and a bit of a guess
about what it might be doing in the future.
Let's celebrate this 50th golden milestone
and look forward to the next 50 years.
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