Interland 2023 - a junior's perspective
On 5th March three of our juniors (Ben, Tommy and Scarlet) travelled to Belgium as part of the England team for Interland 2023. England competes annually in this match against the French, the two Belgian teams: the Flemish OV and French speaking Fédération Régionale des Sports d’Orientation (FRSO), the Netherlands – Nederlandse Oriënteringsloop Bond (NOLB). This year as guests, a team for Luxembourg competed hors concours. The Interland race was staged in the Kattenbos forest by Lommel, 64km E of Antwerp. Typically Flemish terrain featured small well mapped relief, predominantly coniferous trees, some semi-open heathland, “challenging sand dune orienteering; fast in the open forest, blocks of limited visibility”.
Read on for the results and a report from Ben who was selected to join the England team for the first time.
The hosts, the Belgian federation – Orienteering Vlaanderen (OV) achieved a convincing win; England were second and the French Ligue des Hauts de France de Course d'Orientation (LHFCO) third.
Orienteering Vlaanderen are hard to beat on their home turf (wooded dunes) but the experience for, in particular the junior element of the England team will stand them in good stead for their future international orienteering endeavours. England won the embedded Youth Cup (aggregate under 20 scores) by a margin from OV.
Ben's report:
I set off for my first experience of running for the England team on Friday 3rd March. I travelled with Tommy Heap to the Rendezvous (RV). We got on the bus to meet the other 40 people. I recognised a few of them from car parks over the years, but finally got to talk to them. We got the ferry from Dover to Calais, sitting in groups whilst aboard. At the other end, we stopped at a supermarket to get some fruit, before the final leg for that day to Oostduinkerke Youth Hostel in Belgium. When we got to the accommodation, we were presented with our England tops and hoodies. I shared a room with 3 other M14’s (Lawrence Hodgson, Marcus Perry, Monty Bratcher-Howard). This was a good opportunity to get to know them as I’d only seen their names on the results before.
On Saturday, we had a training session around Pelt in an area called Toekomstlaan (still in Belgium). On the way there we picked up some other competitors (including Scarlet Heap who’d flown in from the north of England). The training seemed to have a lot less health and safety than in England (every course had an unmanned crossing at a roundabout and access to a main road). The training session was to get us used to the Belgian terrain and so was an actual event. The area had similar contour features to the main event. We stayed in a sports and arts centre on the map. Food was provided by the centre and we had a team meeting afterwards.
On Sunday, we had to get our bags on the coach by 8:00 and take a 15 minute trip to the Interland area ‘Kattenbos’. The Start was 1800m from the competition centre and a lot of the other people were already there. I got there 10 mins before my early start 8:38 (Belgian time-1hr ahead). The terrain had small relief with coniferous trees and heathland. Attention was vital in the low visibility. I placed 6th out of 13 and once all of the competitors had got back, we discovered that we had won the junior trophy and come 2nd to Belgium in the overall competition. These are the results Interland (helga-o.com) I felt that my run went mostly well apart from one 180° error, which I picked up and resolved quite quickly. I felt like I got a lot out of the experience such as: being able to talk to more people of the same age on my course and orienteering outside the British Isles for the first time.
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