Irish Orienteering Association 3.33

Orienteering is a sport, which combines outdoor adventure with map reading and navigational skills. It involves navigating though forests, parks, open mountain or streets with the aid of a specially produced map and orienteering compass, with the aim being to locate checkpoints (controls) on various natural and man-made features along the way, such as a boulder, track junction, Buildings or pond. Controls are generally represented by distinctive orange and white flags.

The skill in orienteering is in choosing the best route between controls — while beginners’ courses may not offer choice, as you progress you will learn to decide between options — perhaps over a hill or a longer route which goes round it. It is this stimulating mental challenge as well as the physical activity that makes orienteering so popular. Each event may have a number of courses of differing lengths and levels of difficulty occurring at the same time.