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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Silva Orienteering Camp



Silva Orienteering Camp took place in Vidnava in the Czech Republic the last week of August. It's a camp for 8-18 year olds, mostly Czech children, but there were people from Israel, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland and Spain too. Really my experience can be summed up in an A-Z!




Andrea - my friend from the Irish Squad who acted as a translator for a lot of the camp

Bikes - we went on bike trips as well as cycling to and from events

Challenge - as well as the maps being complex, our fitness levels were challenged
Dancing- everybody in camp had great fun dancing the macerena at the Spanish evening!



Entertainment - every evening there was cultural evenings or discos to keep us amused

Frogs - they were everywhere in the forests we were in!

Great experience - a chance to learn from top Czech orienteers

Heat - most days it was over 20 degrees celcius which was different to what the Irish orienteer is used to!

Israelis - they were interested in finding out about different cultures and in sharing their own

Jokes - they gave us a control on a rock in the middle of a river...why???

Kangaroos - Sagi from Israel supposedly saw kangaroos whilst out orienteering but we hunted and found none

Late night cards - our team had a tendency to play 'DONKEY' every night until quite late ...

Mosquitos - too many bites, my only complaint!

New friends - I hope to meet up with all my friends at orienteering events next summer :)

Orienteering of course but also organisation. Silva O camp is impecably organised

Playing games - we had our own olympics with crazy madeup games like throwing the control as opposed to a javelin!


Queen - when a girl on our team entered the miss vidnava contest, we all helped her with her free performance by dancing in the background the dancing queen

Rain - it rained all morning for the score event

Slovakians and Slovenians - pretty much all the friends I made at O Camp where one or the other

Terrain - very complex forested areas which were quite different from Irish terrain

Uphill race - we had to run 800m of steep uphill

Vidnava - we were 4km from the town


Wasps - lots of them, especially at breakfast

X(cross) - the first day we had laps to run in the heat, a bit like the time trials except steeper.

Yellow - the colour of the girls tshirts, the boys got blue

Zdrahal, Robert - the guy in charge, usually known as Brko

I'm looking forward to going back next year to this excellent camp!! See you there in 2010?