Humber Night Challenge 2011

Many thanks to the 15 HALO members and the 1 non-member involved in this year’s Humber Night Challenge which was organised jointly by Humber Police, Humber Fire and Rescue, the Tribune Trust and HALO on 12/13 March. As well as giving up all of the Saturday evening (or the early hours of Sunday morning, or in some cases both) 7 members put on seven training sessions at various venues in Beverley, Hull, Grimsby and Scunthorpe prior to the event.

Some 150 youngsters from East Riding, Hull, North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire in teams of 5 successfully completed 20K of night orienteering, mainly off road starting and finishing at Brantingham Park (the home of Hull Ionians Rugby Football Club) in the East Riding. The top three results, which were kept under wraps until the prize giving at the Odeon Cinema in Hull last month, were all teams from the East Riding –

1^st Captain Birdseye and His Fish Fingers (Elloughton) (9^th – 4:45:35)

2^nd Hessle Road Network (Hessle)                              (5^th – 4:39:46)

3^rd The Dark Knights (Hull)                                          (2^nd – 4:17:32)

The brackets show the position and how long the teams took to complete the course, excluding the time taken to tackle the six challenges which they encountered on route. The final positions were adjusted to reflect their scores for the challenges. The fastest team took 4:14:07 but clearly did not do so well on the challenges.

The first challenge, which was run by HALO, was to plot 13 map references which identified the route to be followed. Three challenges were run by JCS Leisure (the adventure company at Elsham) under HALO members’ supervision, with the remaining two organised by Humber Fire and Rescue and the Coastguards. HALO’s SI equipment was used for the start, finish and the controls on route.

The prize for the winning team was a week’s adventure course in the Lake District. HALO presented each of the members of the top six teams with a HALO prize voucher which entitles the holder to free admission to any HALO Club Night or Orienteering event for a year.

John Butler