Types of events
There are four categories of orienteering event from Level A to Level D. Level A events are Major Events such as a British Championships, Level B events are high quality competitions that attract orienteers from around the country, Level C events attract participants from the local Region and Level D events are usually aimed at participants in a 'localised' area.
Level D events are ideal for newcomers, but courses suitable for beginners are on offer at all level C events too. Within that range of event levels there are line courses, where you visit controls in a set order (Saxons KOL and Sunday league events), and score events, where you choose the order and number of controls to be visited, normally in a set time (Saxons KNC events). Winning times for most level C events should be around 1-2 hours.
Courses available at level C and D events
Courses are graded according to their length and technical difficulty.
Juniors would normally start on the yellow course, whilst an adult novice would begin with either the yellow or orange course, depending on their confidence. A competitor’s progression can then be made on to courses with more challenging navigation, up to the appropriate length for their fitness.
Yellow Courses (easy and short) use simple linear features like paths, walls and streams.
Orange Courses progress to basic use of the compass and route choice.
Light Green Courses are ideal for improvers as the navigational difficulty begins to increase and uses simple contours and ‘point’ features. They are also ideal for more mature competitors who prefer to minimise the physical difficulty of their course.
Green Courses are used mostly by experienced orienteers wanting a short but challenging course with hard navigational difficulty.
Blue Courses are a longer, more physically demanding course than the green. The distances are more varied between controls.
Brown Courses are very physically demanding and have a very hard navigational difficulty. They are for experienced orienteers only.
At KOL events yellow, orange, light green and blue courses are available. At Sunday league events the full range of colours are available.
STRING Course : At some special events we also put on a course especially for the very young children. The controls are linked together by a very long line of string, so the navigation is easy and fun. The controls could also be cartoon animals. Depending on the age of the child parents can go round as well.