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Introducing Orienteering at the Craigmillar Castle Park Spring Family Festival
“Do you like exploring?” ... Yes ... Do you like maps?” ... Nodding, with smiles ... “Do you want to try some orienteering?” ... Yes, with more smiles!
A sunny Easter Saturday afternoon is an ideal time to introduce families to the delights of orienteering, and it was great to spend time with fifty or so children and adults who who came up to chat at the Interlopers stall at the Spring Family Festival organised by Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspace Trust (ELGT).
Once the egg hunt, silent disco, crafts and circus skills had been sampled, they wandered over to see what all the orange and white kites were about – and a very pleasing number headed off with an orienteering map or two in hand to try out either on their way home or over the holiday weekend.
Interlopers club volunteers were there to tell people about our newly reinvigorated Permanent Orienteering Course and encourage interest in using it. A Micro-O game with stakes and pin-punches gave a chance to explain some basic map skills, with some clearly very navigationally-talented kids then primed to take their parents off on a short introductory White or Yellow course – or a couple of courses, in some cases! Parents commented on the value of a ‘different type of walk’ to get their families out, as well as learning some map skills – with quite a few also noting that they’d never really explored the park properly. Various grandparents were also very keen, seeing the benefits of orienteering as an activity they could do together with their grandchildren as something fun outside. Hopefully we’ll see some maps in hands around the park this spring, as well as seeding ideas about going along to a local competition event sometime.
Many thanks to William and Paul for helping me out. Thanks too to ELGT for supporting the Permanent Orienteering Course re-development by installing the new marker posts as well as community engagement through its regular events in the Park.
Future dates for your diary for more Family Festivals are Saturday 3 May and Saturday 7 June (all 1-3pm by the Playpark), and ELGT will be making course maps available again (free) for anyone interesting in trying out orienteering.
If you can’t make any of the events, you can download course maps for free from https://interlopers.org.uk/go-orienteering/permanent-areas-2/craigmillar-castle.
Thanks also to City of Edinburgh Council for grant funding through its Community Sport & Physical Activity Found, and of course to the Orienteering Foundation for contributing grant funding to support Interlopers’ Club Development work over the past year.
(and thanks to Katherine Ivory for organising the event and writing this article!)
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