A SHORT HISTORY OF SARUM - BY NEIL UNDERWOOD

It all began when several people who had been road running together decided they would attend a two-day course on orienteering organised by members of Wimborne orienteering club (Chris and Mike Tween and others were involved from Wimborne). The first day was held at Salisbury Technical College and taught the theory of orienteering, The second day was a practical session held on one of Wimbornes’ areas, Vernditch, located to the South West of Salisbury. It was only a week or two later that those who had attended the course had the opportunity to take part in a real orienteering event, organised by Wimborne. This all happened in the Autumn of 1973 and by the end of that year Sarum Orienteers had been formed with about 15 members. Each of the founder members agreed to lend five pounds to the club to get it started (one of the founder members recently reminded me that he was still waiting for the club to refund his five pounds now that Sarum was solvent).

Without any areas of its own, Wimborne very kindly handed over Vernditch to Sarum, and the clubs’ first event was organised, using borrowed equipment and black and white maps. Unfortunately there is little documented evidence of what Sarum was up to during the 1970’s. However, several events were organised each year and gradually several members gained the skills required for mapping areas and drawing maps and hence a number of areas became available for orienteering including some still used today such as Hamptworth, Clarendon, Perham Down (now BADO) and West Woods (now North Wilts).

The very first issue of SCAN (Sarum Comment And News) the Sarum newsletter appeared in February 1980, although strictly speaking it wasn’t called SCAN until the second edition following a competition announced in the first edition to name it (the winner received a Silva Compass). By the third edition SCAN was announcing that Sarum at last had its own British Champion – Ron Ley in the M56 class (yes that is correct M56). Ron completed the 6 km 125m climb course in 58 min 50 sec. SCAN goes on to explain that only a few years earlier he had been advised to give up the dreaded weed and take some exercise. He began walking then short and long jogs before eventually running and orienteering. SCAN also notes that he was running faster than most of the younger members of the club. In fact during the 80’s and early 90’s Ron ran down the age categories eventually gaining Gold standard in all but the M21 age group, by then he was well into his sixties.

For the 1987 season Sarum arranged to host one of the national events for the first time. Unfortunately after putting in a considerable amount of effort mapping, planning and organising the event the high winds experienced in the south of England in February 1987 caused such devastation to Hamptworth and Langley woods that the event had to be cancelled. It was later run in May 87 as a badge event with new courses avoiding the worst of the windblown areas.

Another event where things didn’t go to plan was the Caddihoe Chase at Longleat in 1997. The club was using tried and tested software to tabulate the results and work out the chasing start times for day two. Unfortunately halfway through generating the chasing start times a software error occurred. Despite re-entering all the results by hand several times (there was no electronic punching then), and working through the night the programme would not produce all the times for day two. A desperate call for help to John Parfitt’s daughter, Mandy, at 0600, got her out of bed and she agreed to come to Longleat. Mandy was able to write some software in the middle of the assembly field very early on the Sunday morning and we were eventually able to get everyone off in the chasing start in the correct order.

In the last five or six years the Sarum juniors have made a name for them selves, achieving very good results in a number of national and international events. Andy Thornton was Southwest junior coach for a number of years. Jeff Butt has now taken on coaching for the club and was awarded the Coach of the Year award for 2005.

The highlight of the club’s history must be winning the Compass Sport Trophy (the small clubs competition) in 2003. The club has managed to win through to the final in both 2004 and 2005 but have been unable to re-gain the trophy. Perhaps 2006 will see Sarum winning the trophy again.