Day 5 of Youth Squad Tour in Sweden

From shopping, to misplaced controls, to pulling "Carl's" , Day 5 was certainly an interesting day indeed. This section of the blog is also written by me, James.

The first training session of the day was Relocating. We were placed in one of the best looking forests of the tour (so far) and were split up into three groups to find our way around. Andries and Rory were placed together, Carl and Heather were placed together and Matthew, Sarah and I were placed together (this blog will mainly be written from what I did, so that's a small spoiler). Tania and Nick were shifting between the three groups seeing how everyone goes on their various routes.

I won't be going into deep details about what happened on the various runs because there is a lot to cover and I might as well write a novel about our shenanigans, but I will tell the details that make for good comedy if you are an Orienteer.

Matthew was relocating to control point 2 (on a knoll) and Sarah and I realized that there was something wrong, Matthew was at the wrong knoll and he was adamant that we were at the right place. I (mainly), on the other hand, was adamant that it was after the marsh south of the path close to a form hill. I was right and we went on to the next one.

Going to the last control on the first loop (outer east side of a boulder), I put the control by the wrong boulder. Hilarity ensued where no one else could find the control, whereas Sarah, Matthew and I were silently snickering to ourselves. We were eventually told to go and find it when we started collecting the controls and we found it easily. I eventually said that it was the right control in the wrong place in what we believed was the right place. It was incorrect.

On the other hand, our relocating skills were great.

We came back to have a feast of a lunch consisting of penne and bolognaise. Most of that food was obviously consumed by Heather and surprisingly Sarah because they went up for seconds (and probably thirds knowing Heather). We also decided which person had or did something that would define them for this whole tour. To pull a "Heather" is to go up for seconds and maybe thirds. To pull a "Carl" is to get hopelessly lost and maybe even go off the map. To pull an "Andries" is to go through every single marsh possible and to loose your shoes in the marshes. To pull a "James" is to forget your bus card at the clubhouse. We are still waiting for Matthew, Rory and Sarah.

Shopping was an interesting new experience for us. Nick showed us how to shop in ICA, the equivalent to Shoprite Checkers or possibly Pick 'n Pay. At the entrance, you can dispose of cans and bottles with bar codes for a Krona each. Inside, you can hire a scanner, go around the shop and scan what you want, and you pay for them at a checkout without actually talking to a cash teller.

The seven of us young Orienteers shopped the old fashioned way in following Heather on her desperate search for the lost treasure of Cereal Bars. We all found our goodies to survive on for the rest of he week that consisted of gigantic bags of chips, sweets, Daims, Bubble gum and various flavours of Fanta. We went afterwards to get a McFlurry and/or chips from McDonald's.They are damn expensive! We eventually returned back to the clubhouse for an hour so wen could get ready for our training session with OK Ravinen and have a bubble gum blowing fun time in which I actually made a big bubble for the first time ever.

Also Heather didn't find her cereal bars.

For our last session in forests, we did a long course as training for Saturday's event. The guys did the first loop of the black course (more difficult than the brown at home) and the girls did the orange course (the equivalent of a green at home). The guys all did their courses differently so we weren't able to follow each other. My order was: 12;1;6;5;4;3;2;7;11;Finish.

We only had 90 mins to do this so my course was like this. My highlight of the course was going down to 7 and seeing Sarah in the marsh coming towards me, and she didn't see me at all hiding behind a rock on the floor. As she was passing me I jumped up a gave her a start. I was laughing and she was struggling to muster a frown because she was also smiling. We laughed about this at dinner.

                                                  (the "orange course" that the girls did)

Later on near control point 11 by the lake, I found Matthew wondering around hopelessly lost. As he saw me he exclaimed that he pulled a "Carl" and he ran around the whole lake and surrounding marshes. We eventually went back to the finish because it was almost 30 mins away and we were running out of time. We found our way back to control point 12 and we saw Carl, who almost pulled a "Carl" himself but he relocated himself easily. We got back to the finish and went back to the clubhouse to enjoy a simple yet great dinner of hot dogs, chips and butterscotch pudding. As I write this, we are getting the bathrooms, kitchen and sleeping rooms ready for tomorrows event that we are hosting.

This event will pay our rent tomorrow.

Written by James Hancock.