Our new POC at Swadlincote Woodlands was launched yesterday at a small but fun event, with three challenges to complete. The permanent course has 20 controls, which take the form of small plaques with an orienteering kite and some symbols and abbreviations around the edge. For the event, we added larger control kites!
Panner Rex Bleakman created 3 loops round the permanent course controls, with quiz questions. For the 3.25km Long course, we had to note down the orienteering symbols to the right of the kite. For the shorter courses, there were letters and abbreviations to collect, and an anagram to solve. Answer cards were carefully checked by Lester and Yvonne!
Jess deserves a special mention for completing all 3 challenges.
Five things you didn’t know about Swadlincote
1 Eddie the Eagle (born 1963) learnt to ski on the dry ski slope there (before the Snow Sports Centre opened in 1987). He took up skiing (and later, ski jumping) after a school trip aged 13, and was entirely self taught and self funded. He was last in two events in the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary, but still warmed the hearts of the nation!
2 The actor Sir John Hurt (1940–2017) was born in Chesterfield but lived at Woodville near Swadlincote between the ages of 5 and 12. His father was vicar at St Stephen’s Church.
3 The musician Joe Jackson (born 1954) spent the first year of his life in Swadlincote, before moving to Portsmouth.
4 Sharpes Pottery Museum in the town celebrates Swadlincote’s industrial past. There were many pipe works, including one (Woodward’s) on the site of Swaldincote Woodlands, where clay was also quarried. These closed down in the 1960s and ’70s. The site became a rubbish dump until it was acquired by the National Forest around 1990. Methane from the dump is collected and burnt in the enclosure at Control 12.
5 One of the paths on the northern part of the orienteering map is called Mexican Joe Way. I had make enquiries about this, and Yvonne told me that Mexican Joe was an itinerant magician who was due to perform in Swadlincote and slept rough in a quarry the night before the show. The following day his body was discovered brutally murdered, with the attacker never found. Joe’s real name was Herbert Notting Turner, born in Pontefract in 1866, the murder taking place on 1 November 1908.
