Plenty of Families and Friends!
Deep in the woods (well, on the tracks in the woods!), something stirred...
Yes, it was Luxembourg Orienteering – coming back to life after its Christmas and New Year break, for our first Family and Friends informal event in 2026. And a very impressive reveille it was, too. On the morning, there were no less than 58 participants – probably the biggest turn out there’s ever been for one of LuxO’s informal events – be it one of our relaxed Family and Friends activities, our LuxNUL Night Urban League, or our LuxSUL Summer Urban League.
The sunshine that organiser Orsi had ordered unfortunately didn’t get delivered! But it didn’t rain or snow, and in a different and slightly mysterious way the Bambësch forest was rather lovely in the winter mist.
Thank you all for coming – and for sticking to the new rule that we’re now having to impose, which asks you all to stay on the tracks and not go off into the virgin forest. We know that it’s not how our true forest sport should be, but unfortunately the forestry authorities have recently told LuxO rather firmly that they can’t make an exception for us from their normal rules. It’s a pity, but there is still some of the navigational challenge out there, and the forest still looks nearly as beautiful.
The results are posted in the usual place on the Helga results website. Here’s a link https://helga-o.com/webres/index.php?lauf=6479&lang=en&year=0&country=&runner=0&orga=0&mdv=0
We weren’t able to combine the results from the Rabbit and Squirrel courses with those from the Deer course, which used the Score format (visit as many controls within the 45 minute time limit, with penalties against the points scored for being back late). So, please ignore the Deer results on the Helga website. Especially David’s – he was so busy trying to make his new and complicated GPS watch work, he forgot to punch the start, so the timing system has assumed that he was still running a race he was at earlier in the month!
The final scores from the Deer course are attached below. One small refinement has been made from the published rule for punishing competitors who go over the time limit – instead of 1 point per minute, the scoring has deducted 0.1 points for every completed 6 seconds late. The attached sheets also show who visited which controls.
Congratulations to the leaders. And also to Ondra, who managed to visit all the controls (except one – maybe his mistake?) in only nearly 8 minutes over the time limit. His Garmin said he covered 10.27km - impressive. And to Alexander, who did get them all, in a rather longer time – but he still didn’t go into the minus score zone!
Lastly, huge thanks to Orsi, for putting on a superb one-woman show in organising everything. She updated the map (and apologises for the disappearing track west of 144), planned all the courses, used the clever PurplePen app for overprinting the courses and control descriptions onto the map, printed the maps, and organising putting out the controls. And she set up and ran the Helga entries and timing system before and on the day. (One small plea here – please sign up on the website as soon as you know you want to run, it gets rather fraught if there’s lots of data to input on the day.)
And thanks too to the LuxOs who helped on the day - Gabi, Gergő and Julien for helping put out the controls. And Gabi and Gergő (again!), Sasha and Bence B for going back out into the mist to collect all the controls to round off a super day.
Watch this website for information on the next LuxO informal event. And for keenies, do sign up on O’Punch for the next event in the O2Lux series that we in LuxO support together with our good neighbours in Belgium. It’s next Sunday (1 February), up at Nolinfaing, not far off the E411.
