#WOC2016

On Tuesday 3rd June I flew down to Gothenburg to meet up with Magnus, Lisa, Mattias, Greta and Lizzie to do a week of orienteering training in the area where the World Champs will be in 2016. We stayed for a week in Bovallstrand which is basically half way between Gothenburg and the Norwegian border. In total over six days we did five different courses on four different maps. For majority of the courses I got extremely lost and ended up skipping half the course, but I didn't mind too much as it still gave me experience for running on the type of terrain that the Swedish West coast gives you. I found it very hard to run on, especially compared to New Zealand terrain which I have run on for the past five years. Compared to the terrain in Umeå, it was quite similar, but also very different. I think I found it harder than the terrain in Umeå, mostly because I have had very little experience with it.

In all honesty I think Mattias enjoyed
 being stuffed into the birds nest...

On the day we didn't go running, we ended up at the zoo. I actually found it quite exciting - I can't remember the last time I went to the zoo!

After going to the zoo I ended up not doing much so I decided to go up to the top of one of the nearby hills. It was rocks the whole way up and had the most amazing view at the top. I really enjoyed climbing up, even though it took about two hours to get up there, enjoy the view, and get back!

It was the point in the middle (120m high), viewed from where we were staying.

Panoramas from the top

I found a rock pile at the top, so of course I added one to it

Not a bad photo considering I took it myself... 

We also ended up going to the rock carvings and had a look around there.

I managed to get a good photo of Lizzie whilst looking around the museum. 

Sunday evening we went crab fishing, which is actually quite fun! I caught about five crabs maybe, but they were far too small to eat :(
On Monday, after our last training, we dropped Lizzie and Greta back in Norway, and went for a walk over just so I could I have been to Norway!

Then it was back to Gothenburg for a night, before flying home.

This was from Gothenburg to Stockholm

This was leaving Umeå

 I really enjoy taking pictures from planes... don't know why!

While I was down south I actually missed the last week of school (but as it was the end of term I didn't miss anything important), and I was just back in Umeå in time to see the students who were in their last year of school riding around the town centre on trailers pulled by tractors (graduation is very big in Sweden and is celebrated by all the students walking out wearing their graduation hats, carrying signs with pictures of them when they were small on them).

I am now on Summer Holidays until around the 20th August (Yay!). This evening I am going to Finland to compete in Venla. I am running the third leg, in a competition with about 1200 other teams!