What is Orienteering ?

Orienteering is an exciting, challenging sport. It involves competitive navigation using a map and compass - competitors choose their own way between control points. Most orienteering takes place in woodland or on open hillsides, but can also take place in school playgrounds and urban parks.

For beginners, we recommend one of our Saturday Events, or perhaps try one of our District Events (or maybe at one of the other local clubs), which will always have beginners courses and helpful advice from the club members. During the summer months we also run a series of training actvities on Wednesday evenings, in conjunction with other local clubs, a list of these can be found on the Summer Training Activities page.

A list of events from both BKO and other local clubs in and around the BKO area, is available on our BKOfix Page

We always welcome new members, - detailed information about the club and joining us is in the Joining BKO page.


Much more information is available from the national organisation, British Orienteering at http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/page/newcomers_guide


Know Your Sport - Orienteering

For several years the BKO Newsletter has included a section called ‘Know Your Sport’ which provides those new to orienteering with helpful guidance on many aspects of the sport. These have been made into a series of leaflets in PDF format, and are listed below and can be downloaded individually. Please take a look to learn more about the sport.

Perhaps the best place to start is with one which attempts to answer the question: 'So what is orienteering?'  This contains the complete list with direct links to all leaflets shown below.