The fun of orienteering

We've been orienteering for a while now, and all to often it gets all too serious, so its fun to kick back and do something low key on a sunny day in a beautiful place somewhere new. Thats what we got up to last night over in Seatoun on the edge of the Harbour entrance, where you can sit on a big sandy beach and gaze over at the forested Hutt valley. Fellow elite orienteer Lizzie Ingham one of the organisers for the evening had the same idea...

Lisa Eagle was down from Hastings, where she lives the pampered wife of a local optometrist. Lisa's given up the pretense of been an athlete now (unlike us...we stick with the pretense) but she used to be damn good. You know the older you get the better you were! But nah, she seriously was a talent and Penny and I were both lucky to be in the same team as her for Junior World Champs, me in 1999 (Bulgaria), Penny in 2000 (Czech Republic). And we got her back out there, heres the evidence.

I have a real soft spot for old war time gun emplacements and home guard sort of relics. So it was great to rise from the streets and school of Seatoun onto the wild slopes of Point Dorset where eyes once scanned the harbour entrance for lurking dangers from concrete bunkers. Penny scrambled down into one to clip the checkpoint and the girls posed by the graffitied wall (unfortunately the camera shook).

We sprinted off (well sort of) down the windswept ridge with the Interislander chugging out of the harbour. It wasn't far back to the finish, the greasy groper and fish n chips on the beach.