Reduced fees for new members

From 1st September, new members can join our club at reduced rates: Adults £15 (instead of £25), Family £34 (vs £57), Young Adults £9 (vs £16) and Juniors £4 (vs £7).

To qualify you must not have been a member of British Orienteering in any of the previous four calendar years.

From 1st January 2025 new members will need to renew at the standard rates

Medal for CHIG member at the World Biathlon Championships in Denmark

CHIG member Dominique Lazanski was part of Team GB’s Bronze medal-winning W95 relay team in this year’s World Biathlon Orienteering Championships. Similar to its winter equivalent, biathlon orienteering involves rifle shooting but with competitors having to undertake orienteering courses before returning back to the range, providing both an endurance (and navigational) challenge. Speaking after the event, Dominique said that “it was very technical orienteering and so so hard. I learned a lot!”. Congratulations Dominique!

Dominque (left) after receiving her bronze medal alongside teammate Pippa at this year’s World Biathlon Orienteering Championships

Captain’s Newsletter

Click here to read the latest Newsletter from Club Captain Harold Wyber

Training/coaching programme

The programme for this Autumn is as follows:

• 5th October: Hainault Forest

• 26th October: Walthamstow Forest

• 23rd November: Epping Forest

• 14th December: Epping Forest

These sessions will start at 10:30 and last 90 minutes. They are designed to cover all capabilities and experience.

Details of each session will be emailed nearer the time

Club Championships on 8th September

The Club Championships will be held at HAVOC’s Dagnam Park event on 8th September. Details of which Course you should enter can be found in the Newsletter

Results for SWELL 2023/24

The 2023/24 South and West Essex Local League has now concluded and various CHIG members feature prominently in the results. Iain Amber came first on Blue (out of 178 competitors), Donatas Tumaitis came third on Brown (out of 109), Harold Wyber came sixth on Brown, Joanna Qiu came sixth on Orange (out of 47) and Tim Pribul came 16th on Green (out of 226). The full set of results is available here

Iain Ambler (right), overall Blue course winner in the 2023/24 SWELL series, along with fellow CHIG members Dave Norman (left) and Harold Wyber (centre) at the final event of the series in Hornchurch Country Park

British Sprint Championships

Congratulations to Jacob Stevens who came 13th in the M45A class at this year’s Championships held at Warwick University on 23 June. Jacob was just 2 mins 7 secs behind the winner

The Fairlop Flyer

The Flyer for our next event on 16th July at Fairlop Waters has just been published.

This event is suitable for both newcomers and families, and you can start your course between 18:15 and 19:30.

Online entries are now open on the Fabian4 website.

GLOSS competition starts 23rd June

The Greater London Orienteering Summer Series (‘GLOSS’) is an annual Summer inter-club competition between orienteering clubs in and around London.

There are two courses: the GLOSS course which is about 3½ to 4½ km (with optional extension to around 6 km) and is of moderate navigational difficulty, and a ‘Yellow’ course which is about 2km with easier navigation. Navigate between control points – you decide the best route to complete the course in the quickest time. Beginners welcome!

The best six handicapped times for each club at each event score points, which are totalled at the end of the season. GLOSS uses a handicap system in determining individual performance , based on how well you perform against the average of your British Orienteering Ranking Scheme scores.

There are three events this year, starting on 23rd June. Click here for details.

New CHIG website now live

I am delighted to announce that our new website is now live. Please email Dave Norman if you have any questions or comments

Discounted rates for new members

From 1 May new members get a discount on their first year’s membership fees. See our Membership page for details

Come & Try It event

On Saturday 27 April we held a ‘taster’ event in Wanstead Park. Organiser Ray Weekes said:

Many thanks for coming to our Try-Orienteering event this morning in Wanstead Park.

Hope you enjoyed it.

We had 20 entries but as some of your were in groups of 2 or 3 then the total number of participants was far greater.

Pleased to say that everyone completed the course successfully.

I am not publishing individual times as it was not intended as a competition or race, just an introduction to the sport.

New eLearning courses announced

Learn how to plan an orienteering course or how to draw an orienteering map by taking one of these new eLearning courses just announced by British Orienteering

Captain’s Newsletter

In this 2023 end-of-year newsletter email, we've got exciting news about the 2024 qualifying heat of the CompassSport Trophy, part of a nationwide inter-club competition for which CHIG will pay for your entry as a way of saying thank you to its members for their efforts in helping us stage events. On this subject, thank you very much to all of you who volunteered as part of this year's Michael Brandon Mitre event in Epping North West on 3 December. We had almost 300 finishers including many top-level juniors, with the event having been designated as a selection race for juniors seeking to represent England in the forthcoming Interland competition (see here).

We've also got a round up of recent performances by CHIG members in events over the past few months and a note on this year's club champions and Maycraft Trophy winner as well as a request for expressions of interest in taking part in relay competitions in 2024. In addition, there's a reminder of what training sessions we have lined up over the coming months.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year's and are looking forward to taking part in more orienteering events over the course of 2024! Best wishes to those members taking part in the HH and LOK-organised Boxing Day score event at Trent Park! To anyone who is around on Boxing Day and has yet to enter, you can still sign up here until 23:59 today (24 December 2023).

Save the date: CompassSport Trophy qualifying event, Sunday 18 February 2024 @ King's Forest, near Bury St Edmunds

We are delighted to announce that our qualifying round for next year's CompassSport Trophy competition will be held at King's Forest, near Bury St Edmunds, in an event organised by SUFFOC.

By way of background, the CompassSport Cup and Trophy events are the UK's premier inter-club competitions, with orienteering clubs from around the country taking part in regional qualifying events to seek selection for the final held in October. As in previous years, CHIG will be submitted and paying for entries centrally, as a way of saying thank you to you for your time and effort in volunteering to make our events a success throughout the year, so look out for an email next month inviting you to sign up. Until then, please save the date!

2023 Club championship winners and the Maycraft Trophy

This year's club dinner, organised by Sally Pribul and held at the Miller & Carter restaurant in the heart of Epping Forest, saw the awarding of trophies following our club championships. These were held on 1 October as part of HAVOC's SWELL and EAL event in Epping Forest South West, giving us our 2023 club champions as follows:

• Open / Men's Champion: Harold Wyber

• Women's Champion: Not contested

• Women's Veteran Champion: Sally Pribul

• Men's Veteran Champion: Stephen Middleton

• Novice Champion: Joanna Qiu

Congratulations to all of our new champions, and also to Iain Ambler who was this year's recipient of the Maycraft Trophy. This trophy is awarded annually to an individual who the club committee considers to have made an outstanding contribution to the running and life of the club, and Iain represents a worthy winner given his role as Organiser for a number of our recent events as well as his work on the club committee. Thank you also to Sally for organising a very successful club dinner!

Recent events round-up

It's been great to see and hear of many club members taking part in a range of events over the part few months. Highlights include:

• Donatas Tumaitis's 16th place on the Black course at this year's Mitre. Donatas also competed in this year's World Deaf Orienteering Championships, representing Lithuania in the Long Distance event in Sweden in August

• Iain Ambler's 12th place on the Blue course at the SWELL event at Belhus Woods organised by HAVOC on 12 November. Iain has been one of our most active members in recent months in terms of number of event attended

• Philippa Allen's 6th place in the women's results, and 32nd place overall on the Blue course at this year's Mitre

• Strong results from a number of CHIG members on course 1 at this year's South East Night Championships at Addington Hills on 18 November, with Mark Ford coming 6th, Campbell Welsh coming 11th and Jacob Stevens finishing in 17th place.

Congratulations to these members and to all of you who have taking part in events over recent months!

Separately, you may be interested to hear that former club member Henriette Albon recently completed the Bob Graham Round in a time of 17 hours and 55 minutes, setting a new women's and overall record time for a mid-winter round. The Bob Graham Round represents an ultra-distance fell running challenge in the Lake District entailing a c. 100km circuit of 42 summits with over 8,000m of climb, and is seen by many as one of the pinnacles of fell running. Many congratulations to Henriette!

Relay competitions in 2024: Request for expressions of interest

Orienteering relays are exciting, engaging events which foster a great sense of club spirit, as well as being fun to participate in. While we have historically put out teams in some of the UK's major orienteering relay competitions, we have done less over recent years and are keen to reverse this trend. As such, to help your club captain plan which events to target, can you please reply to this message if you are interested in taking part in any of the following events:

• JK Orienteering Festival Relays (Stanton Moor, near Matlock, Monday 1 April

• British Relay Championships (Hutton Mulgrave & Skelder Woods, near Whitby, Sunday 14 April)

• British Sprint Relay Championships (Birmingham University, Saturday 22 June).

Club training reminder

Don't forget that club training sessions resume next month, with our next edition to be a workshop on Saturday 27 January providing coaching, guidance and advice ahead of the CompassSport Trophy qualifying event mentioned above. Look out for emails from Tim Pribul for more details about this and future training sessions!

Next event

The next CHIG-organised event will be on Sunday 24 March at Hainault Forest, making use of an extensively-updated map of this spacious woodland area not far from Hainault station. Look out for details over the coming months on how you can enter and also how you can volunteer to help with the smooth-running of this event.

Harold Wyber, Club Captain

CHIG Trophy Winners 2023

Pictured below, left to right, are the 2023 Club Champions and winner of the Maycraft Trophy:

Joanna Qiu – Novice Champion

Sally Pribul – Women’s Veteran Champion

Harold Wyber – Men’s Open Champion

Iain Ambler – Maycraft Trophy

Joanna, Sally, Harold and Iain (CHIG Trophy Winners 2023)

Stephen Middleton was awarded Men’s Veteran Champion.

The Women’s Open category was not contested.

To see the list of previous winners, click here for Club Champions and here for the Maycraft Trophy