Day 7 of Youth Squad Tour in Sweden (Morning)

We wake up very early for yet another day in a row. This time we had far to travel so we had to get going quickly. We all ate breakfast and packed our bags for another time to make the bathroom tidy for the club training in the evening. We also had to make sandwich and pack lunch for when we were finished training. We then set off under the bridge to the bus stop. As we are about to catch a bus we realize that the bus is going the wrong way and we run across to catch the 840 going the other way. To make matters worse Rory pulled a 'James' and almost forgets his bus ticket. Eventually, after lots of stress, we all made it on the bus and were on the way to our training area.

We caught that bus to Handenterminalen and went to the next bus stop to catch the 865. The time came and went that the bus was supposed to come but the bus didn't. After all of us sitting in the snow, freezing, for about 10 more minutes (after 20 minutes) the bus finally came. We then took that bus to Lissma Skola and then had a 1.5km walk to the forest.

Today was a particularly  exciting day for me because I got to run in my new orienteering shoes with studs (which were also bright luminous colours) that I got from Carl's Orienteering shop yesterday.

The running in this forest was nice because the contours were easy to read and there wasn't too much marsh. We did a control picking exercise where there are lots of controls close together. The first loop we went out and followed Nick, soaking up all information we could. We then set out on our own using the controls shown but making our own routes. Another feature that made this extra hard was the fact that there were no controls out and we had to trust our orienteering abilities to make sure we were at the right spot. We then had to meet at 1 pm at the start to leave. It was very cold so many of us ended up finishing early and putting on warm clothes. We then caught the buses back to tidy up and get ready for a trip to Nick's flat.

Written by Heather Wimberley