Ignoring the map (and other choices)

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” says my daughter. “But did you actually look at the map?”

It’s a Wednesday evening and I have just finished a mistake-riddled light green course on a hill above Inverness. Reflecting afterwards, I dredged up a piece of advice I heard recently: always have three points of reference. Your compass counts as one.

So simple.

The first control is usually a mess while I try to click my head into orienteering mode. This time, all points of reference were wrong - my compass, a trail that shouldn’t have been there, and the vegetation boundaries. I ignored the warnings, turning a 75 metre stretch of flat open woodland beside a fence into five minutes of confusion. 

Things didn’t improve much from there. 

Control 5: I followed the compass but ignored the contours, going steeply up and steeply down an unnecessary hill. 

9 minutes

Control 7: I decided the compass was ‘close enough’, and ignored the mismatch of vegetation colours.

8 minutes

Control 12: I found a gorgeous meadow - surely the pale yellow I was looking for - but ignored both compass and contours. Ignored the map altogether, in fact. 

9 minutes

Control 16: Impressive variation on a theme.

20 minutes.

Control 21: A new twist. I’d folded the control descriptions to fit them into the holder, and forgot 21 existed. So I headed straight towards the finish.

So, lesson learned. Next time I will definitely (maybe) maintain at least two points of reference at all times. Bring it on.