News
This July, one of our junior orienteers, Erik, was selected to take part in the Lagganlia training camp, held annually and based near Aviemore in Scotland.
You can read Erik's report of his experience at Lagganlia on the EAOA Junior Squad web page, here.
The 2025 Midland Championships were held on 6 September on Chinley Churn (DVO). The weather was horrid with thunderstorms for late starters, but nice for everybody else. There are photos of the event, including some WAOC runners here
Congratulations to WAOC's Midland Champions:
- M14A Erik Biernacki-Jablonski
- M18E Chun Yan Alistair Fu
- W10A Hana Powell
- W12A Elysia Cowe
- W14A Alys Powell
- W18E Hebe Darwin
- W45L Emma Jarrett
WAOC were able to field 9 teams (including a Junior Alliance team with SOS) on Saturday 30 August at the Sprint Relay Championships at RAF Honington.
Many congratulations to the Young Junior Relay (12-) (Etty, Hana, Edmund), for achieving second place in the M/W12- class. They were delighted with their Silver Medals.
Everyone enjoyed a fantastic event, relatively close to home, and it was great to see outstanding performances across the classes. We were delighted by those running in their first ever (sprint) relays.
Other notable results were 5th and 11th in the Junior (16-) class; 9th in Elite/Open (WAOC’s second, and best ever, result in this class); and 12th and 22nd in Veterans.
As a heads up, next year’s Sprint Champs Weekend will be at University of Bath and UWE on 27/28 June 2026 (with the Relays on the Sunday).
Park-O returns for 2025-2026 on Saturday afternoons and all are welcome - especially newcomers.
For more experienced orienteers, we will be offering an odds/even score at each event with a small prize awarded to the person who gains the most points over the four Park-O events.
The events are:
- Lammas Land and Coe Fen - 13th September 2025
- Wandlebury Country Park - 10th Jan 2026
- Cherry Hinton Hall Park - 14th March 2026
- Coldhams Common - 16th May 2026
With these and other WAOC events, there is orienteering most months from September through to May so please come along and enjoy being out in the fresh air!
Congratulations to our junior team of 23 who competed in the Yvette Baker Final 2025 and won the Trophy! This is the greatest result by WAOC’s Juniors in the club's 52-year history.
The final took place on Sunday 6th July at Capite Wood, in the territory of SouthDowns Orienteers who hosted the event.
This fantastic result is due to the performance of the whole team, but special thanks are due to our Junior Captain, Hebe, for her work coaching and leading the team. Thanks too to all the parents who have supported the effort to get out the team and in helping on the day.
Full results of the competition including results and more photos from the event can be viewed in the SO website (https://www.southdowns-orienteers.org.uk/events/capite-wood-ybt-final-2025-07-06).
This year's East Anglian Championships were hosted by SOS at Writtle Forest on 22nd June. Congratulations to all the WAOC class winners:
W10 Esther Eaton
W12 Elysia Cowe
W16 Kate Jarrett
W40 Helen Bickle
W45 Emma Jarrett
W65 Sue Hartley
W70 Noreen Ives
M12 Joseph Blanchflower
M14 Erik Biernacki-Jablonski
M16 Chun Ho Andre Fu
M50 Stephen Borrill
Full results from the event can be found on the SOS website here, and a list of all the EA Champions can be viewed on the EAOA website.
Our Annual prizegiving and AGM was held on 22nd March 2025 at the Clay Farm Centre in Trumpington.
Our new Secretary, Jonathan Ward, was voted in at this meeting, officially taking over from Jenny Hunt who is standing down after many years as club secretary.
JabberWAOC, our club magazine, is currently dormant. It is a previous winner of the CompassSport Magazine of the Year. The WAOC committee would like to bring it back to life and would love to hear from anyone interested in helping us achieve this.
This would be an opportunity to look at what works for other clubs (e.g. EPOC's Epistle) or to liaise with East Anglian Clubs to work on a joint magazine.
In any case, we welcome articles from club members - we can publish these on the website as individual items event when they are not collected into a periodical magazine. Please send contributions to editor@waoc.org.uk.
The new Odds/Evens score league was run over the 4 Park-O events in the 2024-2025 academic year (Coe Fen, Wandlebury, Milton and Coldham's Common). With a 30-minute time limit, the courses were pretty frantic.
The best 3 scores of 4 events counted and a minimum of 3 events had to be run to count.
The top men were (which were all those with sufficient scores):
No women ran more than 2 events.
Hebe and Kate represented England at Interland 2025 which was held in the Netherlands on 2nd March as part of team of 48 juniors and seniors drawn from 24 separate clubs. Both scored solid results (Kate was a reserve, so was non-competitive). England won the Interland Cup match with 218 points.
The 2024 East Anglian League came to a close with SMOC’s event at Stowe Park on 19th January, and the final league standings have been published on the EAOA website. Here are WAOC's class winners:
James Scott M10, Esther Eaton W10
Erik Biernacka-Jablonski M12, Elysia Cowe W12
Kate Jarrett W16
Rowan Lee (DRONGO and WAOC) M21
Matt Eaton M35, Brian Cowe M45
Stephen Borrill M50, Dil Wetherill M60
Bruce Marshall M70, Mike Bickle M75
Helen Bickle W40, Emma Jarrett W45
Helen Hague W55, Sue Hartley W65
Noreen Ives W70
Congratulations to all the WAOC class winners!
The WAGAL scoreboard has been updated with points from the final WAGAL event of 2024, Mildenhall North on 17th November, and also with points awarded in lieu to officials who organised, planned or controlled at WAGAL events during the year. That means that the standings are now finalised and the class winners can be announced. And they are:
- Junior Men: Erik Biernacki-Jablonski
- Junior Women: Alys Powell
- Senior Men: Mark Hopkin
- Senior Women: Helen Bickle
- Veteran Men: Chris Rampton
- Veteran Women: Emma Jarrett
- SuperVet Men: Dil Wetherill
- SuperVet Wormen: Sue Hartley
The overall highest scorer is once again Sue Hartley. Congratulations to her and to all the class winners.
The 2024 UK Urban League is now complete and winners have been decided. Amongst them were two from WAOC:
Alys ("Perfect 500") Powell in Womens Young Junior category, and Hebe Darwin, first in the Womens Open.
Congratulations to both, and well done too to the 4 runners up from WAOC:
Hana Powell (WYJ), Erik Biernacki-Jablonski (MJ), Kate Jarrett (WJ), and Camilla Darwin (WV).
More details on the 2024 UK League results can be found here.
The East Anglian Urban League incorporated 6 urban events across the region during 2024.
The results have now been published, revealing an impressive number of category winners from WAOC:
- Alys Powell (WYJ)
- Hebe Darwin (WO)
- Johanna Powell and Helen Bickle (WV) - tie for top spot
- Camilla Darwin (WSV)
- Sue Hartley (WUV)
- Erik Biernacki-Jablonski (MJ)
- Chris Rampton and Dil Wetherill (MSV) - tie for top spot
- Mike Bickle (MHV)
Congratulations to all. The full list of EAUL scores can be found on the EAOA website, here.
On 20th October 34 WAOC members travelled to Holcombe Moors in Lancashire to take part in the 2024 final of the Compass Sport competition. WAOC came 6th ranked team in the Cup (for larger clubs). Congratulations to everyone for getting round successfully, surviving both the weather and unexploded ordnance on the hill. Everyone contributed and it was gratifying to see scorers from W12 to W70, with some great performances. WAOC were only one of two teams whose 25 scorers came from all 12 possible scoring classes, which really speaks to the depth of participation and quality in the team.
Individual results can be found here.
Park-O returns for 2024-2025. The courses will change slightly compared to previously, but will still be held on Saturday afternoons and all are welcome - especially newcomers.
For more experienced orienteers, we will be offering an odds/even score at each event with a small prize awarded to the person who gains the most points over the four Park-O events
The events are:
- Lammas Land and Coe Fen - 26th Oct 2024
- Wandlebury Country Park - 11th Jan 2025
- Milton Country Park - 15th Feb 2025
- Coldhams Common - 5th April 2025
(This list was edited in January 2025 to reflect the rescehduling of the MIlton Park-O)
Congratulations to our team of seven WAOC Juniors who travelled to the northern Lake District last weekend to participate in the prestigious Peter Palmer Relays.
WAOC were placed 10th out of 14 teams, finishing as the best team from outside Scotland, Yorkshire or the Lakes.
The Relays were organised by West Cumberland Orienteering Club (WCOC) on a new map combining their areas near Kirkland (Cockermouth). WAOC participated in the full 6-leg Trophy competition. Having camped out in tents overnight in stunning shadow of Knock Murton, the first runners woke before 4.00am, with the relays setting off in complete darkness. The terrain was brutal, with lots of climb and tricky courses, but thankfully mild weather. There was huge enjoyment from the challenge for each member of the team. It was “the most fun orienteering, ever,” according to one WAOC Junior! A great innovation this year was the use of GPS vests so that all runners on each leg could be live tracked on screens in the arena, and by anxious parents, back at home (if awake!).
Full results available here http://www.wcoc.co.uk/pages/re...
Many thanks to WCOC for hosting a fantastic event, and thank you to those WAOC parents who travelled as team coaches and helpers.
The WAOC committee are sad to report that David Peregrine, former chairman of WAOC, EAOA and British Orienteering, has died after a short illness. David received an honorary WAOC membership at our 2023 AGM.
David was an active WAOC member, along with his wife Satu. He went on from the role of WAOC Chairman to become Chairman of EAOA and then of the British Orienteering Federation from 1997 – 2000 and on the Council for 20 years. David also mapped many areas for WAOC, coached Juniors to great effect and enjoyed Mountain Marathons.
His friend David Sedgley remembers:
I have to tell you the sad news that David died in Addenbrookes Hospital last Tuesday - 6th August. He had Lymphoma and had only been seriously unwell for a short time.
David was Chairman of WAOC & BOF at the time I first met him. It was a chance meeting when we had both lost our partners for what was then the KIMM (Karimore International Mountain Marathon) in 2002. We became firm friends and since then have done many mountain marathons together - including the French O'Bivouac in which we won our age class twice - due to David's excellent navigation. [Unlike MM's in Britain, French ones use proper orienteering maps - often using areas previously used for international O events.]
As David's wife was from Finland and mine is French they became firm friends too and always accompanied us on our trips to France.
Many congratulations to the 18 WAOC Juniors for their fantastic Third Place at the Yvette Baker Trophy Final on 7th July. There were many brilliant performances and ALL contributed in terrible weather. This is the best ever result the club has achieved since the Trophy was founded in 1999, and it is great to have some national silverware. Results at https://www.herts-orienteering...
Special mention must be made of Andre winning the entire Light Green course, and to Samuel C-D for winning the entire Yellow course. It was really heart-warming to see the great support for each other and WAOC at Assembly and out on the courses. It is wonderful how much fun Juniors can have orienteering in multiple thunderstorms!
Thank you to Hebe for her leadership as Junior Captain. Thank you to all the parents for their support, and particularly those who stepped in as coaches, recruited team members, and helped ferry Juniors to the remote start. And thanks to Adam and Elizabeth for bringing the extra gazebo!
More widely, a huge number of people have contributed to the recent successes of our Juniors. We can’t name them all here, but is worth collectively celebrating what has been achieved from the development efforts of lots of people in different ways over the past six or seven years.
Next year’s YBT Final is near Ashington, West Sussex, Sunday 6 July 2025. So please put in your diaries now. We will have to qualify in the spring first though!
Photographer: Addy Fu
Photographer: David Dixon
Photographer: David Dixon
Photographer: David Dixon
Photographer: David Dixon
Many WAOC members spent the Easter weekend at the JK festival of orienteering, which this year offered a sprint in the campus of Loughborough University, two days on Cannock Chase (Beaudesert) featuring mud and more mud, and a Relay event on Stanton Moor featuring runnable heather moorland and intricate abandoned mine workings.
Notable achievements include a silver medal for the junior relay team of Alex Darwin, Alys Powell and Erik Biernacki-Jablonski;
First place in M21S on Day 3 for Alex Moore;
Esther Eaton was Winner Overall (combination of Days 2 &3) in W10A; Alys Powell was 3rd place in W12A, and Noreen Ives was winner in W70S having come in first on both days;
At the sprints, Esther came 2nd in the Sprints in W10, Alys came 3rd on W12, Camilla Darwin was placed 3rd in W55, but Ursula took gold in her class (W90).