Greetings from Hungary

Parliament House

The last monument to communism- left as part of the pull out in 1991 is strangely located directly outside the heaviestly guarded building in Budapest - Yes the US Embassy

Dinner Uringa style

It is indeed a small world when you climb a hill to Castle Buda and there standing on a street corner was Ian McKenzie studying the map of the castle intently. Well let us make it even smaller by tossing in Nick and Margaret with whom we shared dinner on a couple of nights and then as we were waiting to tour the ""Underground Hospital" who should walk out on the previous tour none other than Mr Summer Series - Ross Barr.

There is no doubt that travelling to Eurpoe is mind numbing. Even with a magical personal entertainment system spitting movies at you and some great foo,. 30+ hours of sitting bolt upright in a far from comfy chair is not my idea of fun especially if you do not sleep. Mind you it is a means to an end.

The beds at our hotel are not exactly soft and lush but by goodness when the head hit the pillow and the body became horizontal on the first night here there were plenty of zzzzzzzzzzz!

Budapest is a beautiful place. The contrast on the river flats - boy did they have some fun with floods over the years, and the hills on the Buda side of the Danube make it a very picturesque city. There is history and charm dripping from every corner. There is a marked constrast with some buildings having had centuries of grime cleaned from their stonework and others still a very black looking grubby appearance. Some buildings have only the bottom floor cleaned - that is because the rich live on the bottom floor and only they can afford to get the building cleaned.

The transport system is far easier to master than the names of the stops.

Food is good and cheap and beer is very good and cheap. Yes they have bananas at $1.25kg and tasty they were and I can tell you we will be eating more than our fill over the next few weeks.

Lots of walking and yes blisters are a part of life for someone( not me).

I can recommend the "Free Communist Walking Tour" great info and an outstanding guide who had experienced life under communism. Life here is still subject to corruption that became the norm after the carve up of communists owned utilities.

We are now heading for Pecs home of WMOC.

Stand by for chapter 2 -Peaking at Pecs (pronounced paish)

Centennial Park CATI and Junior Series

Maggie Jones (OANSW's New Communications Officer!) will be writing

up the event for the OANSW web news in the next days.

In the meantime, here's some photos of a

most enjoyable, sunny and successful orienteering event set by Sarah Garnett.

QBIII 2011 - a few notes from tortoise Mary Jane

The annual Queen's Birthday Orienteering Three Day Event is one not to be missed, no matter what the weather. Fortunately, though it was cold, it was pretty much not wet ... when we were all out in the forest. The time for exploring Lithgow and environs, well that was another matter and wet certainly did feature.

There are a lot of photos linked to the event website, which give an inkling of the experience. The Uringa social outings aren't included there, though, so here's just a quick one from Saturday night at the Workies. Unfortunately, my closeup photos of the kid's table and of the teenager's table weren't good enough, but you certainly can get the big picture of Uringa and Garingal taking over a neatly set out room of small tables and rearranging to suit!

What about the 'tortoise'? I just have to share how successful my tortoise strategy turned out to be. QBIII is a three day event (with each day also a separate NSW State League event). The top three on each course over the three days are awarded a patch. When I moved up to red courses my only goal has been to finish the course and, maybe, not be last. No patches expected! Over three days this time, however, mispunchi

ng, course setting (one of the hares in my age class) and injury left only two of us standing... and so for the first and perhaps only time in my orienteering career I received an A course patch. Persistence can have its reward. (The emblem plays on the history of the Lithgow Flash.)

QBIII- Lithgow

Well it wouldn't be Lithgow if it wasn't cold and damp and generally speaking bleak.
Fortunately the orienteering was enjoyable and the company warm and friendly.

Day 1 saw a sprint in the grounds of Lithgow High School. What an enjoyable event it was even if I mp'ed. The buildings and surrounding grounds were complex enough to make it interesting and it was rather novel to actually start inside the building.


Uringa performed pretty well Sophie, Georgia, Lawrence, Jane, Angela, Ian, Dick, Dave, Linda, Brian and Maureen all managing a Podium finish.

Results:

M16A Lawrence 2nd
M35AS Dave McKenna 5th
M45A Ian Jones 3rd
M45A Ian Mckenzie 9th
M45AS Ron Pallas mp
M65A Dick Ogilvie 1st
M65A Dave Lotty 2nd
MopB Brian Cleland 3rd
W10A Sophie Jones 1st
W14A Georgia Jones 1st
W21AS Jane McKenna 2nd
W35AS Gayle Shepherd 6th
W40A Linda Sesta 3rd
W40A Maggie Jones 5th
W50A Lisa Lampe 4th
W60A Mary Jane Mahony 3rd
W65A Angela Murray 2nd
W70A Maureen Ogilvie 2nd


Day 2
We were off in the hills surrounding Mt Piper Power Station. It was rather inconvenient to be stuck at the rail crossing on the drive in when an extremely lengthy coal train rumbled through. The walk to the start was up, up, up, down and up. The terrain was rather friendly and very runnable and the courses were challenging enough to maintain interest although my course had a track run to control 1 with what could best be described as a green control at its end. At least 1-2 had some options. That was all I saw of my course as i stopped with Peter Meyer to assist an injured competitor.
There was a great deal of talk about the steep downhill section towards the end- something about older knees suffering.






Results:
M10A Jared McKenna 1st
M16A Lawrence Jones 2nd
M35AS Dave McKenna 2nd
M45A Ian Jones 2nd
M45A Ian McKenzie 9th
M45AS Ron Pallas dnf
M65A Dick Ogilvie 3rd
M65A Dave Lotty 4th
MopB Brian Cleland 5th
W10A Sophie Jones 1st
W14A Georgia Jones mp
W21AS Jane McKenna 4th
W35AS Gayle Shepherd 3rd
W40A Linda Sesta 3rd
W40A Maggie Jones 5th
W50A Lisa Lampe 3rd
W60A Mary Jane Mahony 4th
W65A Angela Murray 3rd
W70A Maureen Ogilvie 1st

Day 3

We headed back to BAAL BONE JUNCTION. This was a lightning fast map that is being eaten by the coal mine ( see the out of bounds section in south western area). A load of fun and fortunately the assembly area in the bush was sheltered and there was a minute amount of warmth coming from a very milky sun. The hot soup was a treat and the junior catering really cleaned up over the weekend. By end of day 1 they had exhausted their supplies and hence the late night Coles and Woolies were targeted.
The unique start - a run through a box culvert under the rail was a novelty although you had to re-focus when you entered the outside world.



Results

M10A Jared McKenna 1st
M16A Lawrence Jones 2nd
M35A Dave Mckenna 2nd
M45A Ian Jones 2nd
M45A Ian Mckenzie 9th
M45AS Ron Pallas 10th ( troubled the scorer at last)
M65A Dick Ogilvie 3rd
M65A Dave Lotty 4th
MopB Brian Cleland 5th
W10A Sophie Jones 1st
W14A Georgia Jones 1st
W21AS Jane Mckenna 1st
W35AS Gayle Shepherd 5th
W40A Linda Sesta 4th
W40A Maggie Jones 5th
W50A Lisa Lampe 3rd
W60A Mary Jane Mahony 5th
W65A Angela Murray 4th
W70A Maureen Ogilvie 1st

And so it was we had reached the end of three great days. Whilst the weather was a bit "iffy" we stayed relatively dry and warmish. The presentation kicked off with a huge raffle draw put on by the juniors.
The badges were presented and the winners were certainly grinners. Those who were badgeless were left to rue the runs that weren't.
I will be very interested to see the schools team when it is announced. Lawrence Jones is running well and has done enough to catch the selectors eyes. Georgia Jones, in her first year of schools eligibility had a great 3 days - (ignore the mp on day 2) She won the other two days comfortably.
Great to see Dick string together 3 solid runs to take out M65A. Consistency was surely the key to the weekend. Ian Jones - 3rd, 2nd, 2nd for a 2nd place overall. Maggie was even more consistent with 5th places across the board.

Overall results:

M16A Lawrence Jones 2nd
M35AS Dave Mckenna 2nd
M45A Ian Jones 2nd
M65A Dick Ogilvie 1st
M65A Dave Lotty 3rd
MopB Brian Cleland 4th
W10A Sophie Jones 1st
W21AS Jane Mckenna 3rd
W35AS Gayle Shepherd 5th
W40A Linda Sesta 3rd
W40A Maggie Jones 5th
W50A Lisa Lampe 3rd
W60A Mary Jane Mahony 2nd
W65A Angela Murray 2nd
W70A Maureen Ogilvie 1st

Well that is that and we all headed off home. I wonder how many like me did not turn left at Lithgow for "Bells" but rather went straight ahead for the long slow drag down the mountain- remind me next time!

Maggie reports on the Callan Park Training Session

Winners are grinners!

That was the answer to the conundrum set by Helen Murphy’s training session Sunday 5^th June at Callan Park. Ingeniously using old Sprint maps from earlier this year, Helen set a course to warm us all up for the QB3 where different control cards gave a different start control for each racer, and all controls were taken in reverse order around the original course. For added difficulty each control had a letter which when rearranged at the finish formed the magic phrase. How anyone could work on a conundrum after running hard beats me – maybe they weren’t running hard enough, or maybe they are just that little bit fitter. Control markers were limited to yellow electrical tape, which made sure we had to be absolutely accurate in our navigation. This added quite a bit of spice when some controls were in woodlands where the leaves were turning golden!

As well as Uringans we also had the Currie family from Garingal and a mother and daughter team from Helen’s local school. When we do the CATI in Callan Park in September it would be good to encourage the local schools to join in –Helen will once again be pressed into service as despite her recent retirement she seems to be as much at school as she was before. Lawrence and Georgia ran and then shadowed Sophie and Jared around, making

a nice change for Jane and me, who could stand and chat at the finish instead of heading out again.

Cormac McMullen brought his dog along which prompted the youngsters to indulge in a dog counting spree as they ran around their course – as if they didn’t have enough to think about!

After the runs there was much post race review, possibly helped along by the fine weather

and the delicious cakes supplied by Helen and Georgia. Whilst the adults got on with tea drinking the youngsters had a impromptu hill rolling race. No-one over 14 seemed to want to join in – strange...

Although we had a great turnout it was unfortunate that some Uringans couldn’t come as they were helping at the NOSH event. When we planned the training, the NOSH run had no date and no organisers so I thought that the 5^th of June was a safe and an ideal date for some training just before the QB3. Helen and I did discuss postponing the training in order to help Ron et al on the NOSH, but in the end there were enough volunteers to help Ron that we didn’t need to reschedule. Sorry to anyone who missed out but there is more training coming up so watch the website for details on that. However for those of us who were able to come along it was a very enjoyable morning and many thanks to Helen and Terry for a great training event.