Orienteering returns to Portstewart after 20(ish) years

Last Saturday (6th September 2014) Orienteering made a welcome return to the sand dunes on Portstewart. There was some debate about when exactly the last event was held there, the general cconsensus was that it was in the mid 90s, possibly 1996.

Portstewart was first mapped in 1983 by Noel Bogle, Anthony McGonigle and David Blair and surprisingly the original map could still be used to find the majority of the control sites, demonstrating how good of a job this group of young mappers did. To the right you can see a comparision of the 2 maps using the Blue course, the only thing that has been done to the 1983 map is that magnetic North has been up-dated, the course has been dropped onto the map without any tweaking.

99 brave orienteers turned up to compete on the brand new map and considering how technical the terrain is there were very few retirals. The results can be view HERE.

Our talented juniors lead the way with M16 Eoghan Knight winning a very competitive Blue course and Paul Pruzina (M18) winning the Brown course. FermOs Eibhlin Largey was the first female on the Blue and international orienteer Áine McCann won the Brown.

NI Orienteering would like to thank North West Orienteering Club for hosting a great event and we all look forward to retuning to the dunes. Plus we would like to thank the National Trust for allowing us to return to the dunes.