British Orienteering has peaked!

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/news/6799/british_orienteering_transgender_policy

'Entry Classes for female competitors are prefixed by “W” and are restricted to those whose biological sex at birth was female.
An Entry Class prefixed by “M” is unrestricted by sex.
Those whose biological sex at birth was not female are only allowed to enter an Entry Class prefixed by “W” if they declare themselves non-competitive..'

Ha, I've been out with that horse!

With one horse, I was determined to outlast her. 1 1/2 hrs later I gave up and went home.

My own horse will plant (and strop) but is slightly less stubborn - making him turn round and go backwards often works as he can't quite figure out how to refuse to do this. Anyway, one time he wouldn't go over a teeny tiny ditch. I got off and waited. And waited. And read my phone. And waited. Eventually he pretended to spook at something and leapt over the ditch. I'll take that for the win. 😀

Love the ditch story.

I did over an hour in the rain with her one day. She eventually gave a big sigh and decided to plod on. I wouldn't have minded so much but we were on our way home.

When they got back they hadn’t been opened as they said they didn’t know how to read them.
How can someone not be able to read a map? If you've ever stood on a slope and looked down into a valley, you should get the basic idea. Couple that with a basic education and it should be obvious.

<boggled>

My horse sighs a lot. I take it as comment on my horsey skills, or lack of them.😂

OK, will stop the horse derailing now!

Really doesn't. It's adorable how hard you're trying to make this point happen though.

I have a nearly-fourteen-year-old grand-daughter coming in eighth in orienteering contests for sixteen-and-unders and am in awe of her skill, but not so much as I am of my grandson aged nine coming first in his class. Go them. Go where they meant to, them!

I guess if you haven’t been taught or introduced to them, or go out on walks anywhere that requires them, you wouldn’t know! It also boggles my mind but I was taught from an early age by my parents, this person hadn’t (and they were quite young at the time). Everyone has different experiences.

So many times, when I’m out in the Lakes or other countryside area with fellow tourists, I’ve had people coming up to me to ask if they can look at my map, can I tell them where the correct path is (as their phone failed) they don’t know where they are or going, do I know how to get to a particular tarn, etc. It’s happened so many times it’s almost predictable. I actually love it as they’re always impressed and grateful!

Teaching children to read maps is actually quite hard. I recall doing it when mine were tiny and wondering how to explain that this picture was a view from overhead with the roof cut away (should have started outside!) It requires a certain amount of imagination, mental positioning and .... well, orientation.

DH had a funny experience once on a work Outward Bound type of course which included a nighttime exercise involving ascending a hill in the Lake District at night. Some of his fellow team members were Dutch and were extremely fit, and capable at outdoorsy things like raft building but their proposed route included a near vertical ascent. When DH objected and suggested a sensible route they were baffled….until he explained contour lines to them.😂

No such thing as 'cis'. And it's not about women being dumb at reading maps. It's about women wanting to have something to our selves just because. We don't have to justify why we don't want males in our spaces or teams or groups. Just because we want it female only is enough of an answer. But I don't expect Mens Rights Activists who use misogynistic terms like 'cis' to understand that.

'I mean' (and why do all TRAs start their sentences like that?, that and the obsession with the word 'literally'), we want female categories because we want them. No other explanation needed. Womens prerogative. Transwomen are the ones who give out misogyny, they as males don't experience misogyny. Maybe you might want to google what the word misogyny refers to. Women experience femphobia and misogyny from males and transwomen.

So a powerful and extremely fit woman won out over lesser fit men. Therefore that means male post pubertal advantage 'does not exist'. Do you even listen to yourself?

Males don't need a 'helping hand'. We are not a male's companion animal or support animal. Males of any identity don't belong in womens spaces. We say NO. End of story.

I'm just putting this in because it'sd an opportunity to use TRA adopted words in an appropriate way. i had two internal maps, one round Dover, one round Dartford, and I found that they were angled wrongly. When I was going east across the Medway bridge I realised that trans Medway Kent had north aligned about north northeast, while cis Medway Kent was more north northwest, amd the roads did not link up. Now corrected.
Keep your cis geographical or chemical.

The current European equestrian orienteering champion is Dutch…….

It's been a while since I've needed to say this, in response to the Flowers argument: TRAs need to get to grips with some basic ecology. Males are faster, stronger etc at population level. That does not mean that no individual woman can win against an individual man.
Christ on a bike. Do these TRAs have a goodie-bag of shit arguments that they bring out every few months on a rota? This isn't even complicated.

Do these TRAs have a goodie-bag of shit arguments that they bring out every few months on a rota?

Yes. Increasingly its just a bunch of ad homs and insults.

Late to this whole conversation but I remember geography lessons at school when I was 11 or 12 and being taught stuff like how to convert a profile of a hill into a contour map and vice versa. How to read and identify degrees N/W, symbols on an O/S map etc. Are maps not taught any more? It’s one of the most useful/long standing life skills I learned at school.

I’m another map lover - and I also like old historical maps of areas I know well as that overlaps nicely with another interest of mine (genealogy).

Both DH and I are good navigators but in very different ways. DH likes working out a route on paper in advance and writing it out and sticking it to the dashboard. He’s a birdwatcher and sometimes he needs to get to some pretty obscure places to see the latest variant on a small brown bird exotic avian visitor, but he struggles if there’s a diversion. I go with the flow and am better at working out a diversion on the hoof. That’s when his inability to follow directions comes to the fore, and like a PP’s DH he’ll expect me to recalculate a route instantly like a sat nav if he’s missed the turning. I’m good but not that good!

Journeys are so much quieter these days now he’s finally given in to technology and installed Waze on his phone.

@ThreeWordHarpy if your DH needs to get to strange places, What3Words is his friend. It will direct him to the correct corner of the correct field.

Oh I know but I’ve only just got him using Waze and WhatsApp and he sees no value in W3W (yet). Give him an OS grid reference and some vague notes (bird last seen in the bush in the church yard) and he’s happy he knows where he’s going, it’s just the process of getting there that can sometimes be a trial. Luckily I don’t usually accompany him!