Summary:
This was our third oocup- the previous ones being in France and Slovenia( the organising team’s home country) and all have been wonderfully organised, cheap ( by horrendous UK major event standards) to enter and on excellent areas using very high standard maps. It’s not too daunting to be there whatever your standard or ability as each day there are not so competitive open classes as well as the standard age classes in short and long variants- the competition usually attracts about 1000 to 1500 entries so is not too huge but still attractive to better orienteers from all over Europe and further so one can get the opportunity to compete with (and against!) them. Of course this year the entry field was dominated by competitors from the Scandinavian countries who are obviously extremely used to this terrain and who inevitably dominated the results in all classes. The few brits that did compete, including us, were generally just pleased to get through each day successfully and almost invariably came at the bottom of the results tables- but that’s not the point- this is holiday orienteering at its best, offering a chance to visit a new area, meet new and old friends, and compete in a friendly way in beautiful surroundings.
We have really enjoyed our trip over here- yes it is expensive and with the current travelling situation not that easy to do, but always worth the effort involved.
Next year (pandemics and travel chaos permitting) the event moves back to Slovenia to the classic very technical karst ( limestone features) terrain. Slovenia is a beautiful country and still relatively inexpensive to get to. We hope to be going if it doesn’t clash with other plans and commitments- does anyone fancy joining us…?
Andy and Rosie