Get Started: Orienteering

Orienteering

Orienteering is a great outdoor adventure sport that exercises both your mind and body! Suitable for all age groups and fitness levels this exciting sport can take place anywhere. Develop your skills in your back garden and then go further afield to explore your local town, parks and forests.

Back Garden Map

Map reading is a big part of orienteering and being able to navigate between markers on a map is key to finding the best route. To help develop these skills our Live Life Outdoors team have developed an introduction to map reading task. Get outdoors and make your own garden map.

What is a map?

A map is a bird's eye view of the ground below. Can you imagine you are an eagle soaring above your garden on a warm sunny day?

Think about:

• What would it look like?
• What shapes would you see?
• Look at the sizes of different objects - which objects look big and which are small?
• Can you add colour to your map to make it easier to understand?
• You might create groups of similar things and give them a symbol (eg all the trees have the same symbol)
• Put these symbols in a list with a short description. This is called a Legend or Key
• You might also try and work out what is North and what is South on your map.

If you can't get out and about why not create a map of your living room or bedroom.

Further Information

The Scottish Orienteering Association have more information on getting started with orienteering. Watch their short video on map making: Part One - Maps

Have you enjoyed taking part in our Back Garden Map activity?

Please share any of your fun activity picture to our Live Life Aberdeenshire Facebook page so we can see how you are getting on – more orienteering activities will be shared soon!