Orienteering by Bike

Ben was REALLY excited to go bike orienteering with the Scouts in Delamere Forest.

He was full of nervous energy before the off - impatiently waiting for his friend Luke to arrive.

Needless to say - I was NOT excited.

The thought of Ben loose in the forest with just a map to follow.....
well, it was pretty terrifying!

The boys set off - 

Al and I had taken our bikes so we could keep an eye on them  -

but we wanted to give them a chance to go it alone -

so as a major distraction we rode through the forest to the visitor centre 

and a lunch of toasted sandwiches and hot chocolate.

In the end we gave the boys an hour to have an unsupervised adventure -

and then set off to find them and see how they were doing.

It turned out that we didn't find them - 

but Ben found me shouting to me as I headed down a hill.

It turned out that they had found the first checkpoint - then taken a wrong turn - ridden round in  along loop back to the first checkpoint - got stuck in a bog - climbed a "treacherous hill" - and Ben had fallen off 3 times....

They were very muddy and way behind the others....

So we pointed them in the right direction and decided to follow behind to make sure that they actually got to the finish line.

In the end they managed to find 8 of the 10 checkpoints - not exactly a wining performance...

.... but more importantly a first exciting afternoon of freedom!