Silva Orienteering Camp took place in Vidnava in the Czech Republic the last week of August. It's a camp for 8-18 year olds, mostly Czech children, but there were people from Israel, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland and Spain too. Really my experience can be summed up in an A-Z!
Andrea - my friend from the Irish Squad who acted as a translator for a lot of the camp
Bikes - we went on bike trips as well as cycling to and from events
Challenge - as well as the maps being complex, our fitness levels were challenged
Dancing- everybody in camp had great fun dancing the macerena at the Spanish evening!
Entertainment - every evening there was cultural evenings or discos to keep us amused
Frogs - they were everywhere in the forests we were in!
Great experience - a chance to learn from top Czech orienteers
Heat - most days it was over 20 degrees celcius which was different to what the Irish orienteer is used to!
Israelis - they were interested in finding out about different cultures and in sharing their own
Jokes - they gave us a control on a rock in the middle of a river...why???
Kangaroos - Sagi from Israel supposedly saw kangaroos whilst out orienteering but we hunted and found none
Late night cards - our team had a tendency to play 'DONKEY' every night until quite late ...
Mosquitos - too many bites, my only complaint!
New friends - I hope to meet up with all my friends at orienteering events next summer :)
Orienteering of course but also organisation. Silva O camp is impecably organised
Playing games - we had our own olympics with crazy madeup games like throwing the control as opposed to a javelin!
Queen - when a girl on our team entered the miss vidnava contest, we all helped her with her free performance by dancing in the background the dancing queen
Rain - it rained all morning for the score event
Slovakians and Slovenians - pretty much all the friends I made at O Camp where one or the other
Terrain - very complex forested areas which were quite different from Irish terrain
Uphill race - we had to run 800m of steep uphill
Vidnava - we were 4km from the town
Wasps - lots of them, especially at breakfast
X(cross) - the first day we had laps to run in the heat, a bit like the time trials except steeper.
Yellow - the colour of the girls tshirts, the boys got blue
Zdrahal, Robert - the guy in charge, usually known as Brko
I'm looking forward to going back next year to this excellent camp!! See you there in 2010?
