John Hurley remembers Daphne Parsons who passed away 27 July 2026, aged 100
Daphne and Terry Parsons and sons Ed and Jim, from Farnah Green near Belper, joined DVO in 1970. The boys were very keen with Ed winning the EMOA League in 1971 and Jim joining me on the BOF Junior Tour in 1972.
Initially Daphne and Terry came along just for a walk around the Wayfarers course. Daphne soon progressed to competing individually and won her class at the LEI Outwoods event on 26/6/1971 followed up by achieving gold standard at events including MDOC High Dam on 12/12/1971.
During 1972 Daphne completed 7 of the National Ranking Events and was easily the highest ranked EMOA Veteran Woman, as no-one else had completed more than 2 events. This was a time when there were far fewer veteran women participating in orienteering than we have now, and in her mid-40s Daphne was DVO’s oldest regular female competitor.
Sadly Terry died suddenly towards the end of 1972. Daphne continued competing and in 1973 achieved 8th in W43 at the JK in Achray and 3rd in W43 at the White Rose.
After this we saw less of her, but she was still active in 1979 winning the Club Championships at Crich Chase by 8 minutes from Dave Skidmore.
In later years she developed a taste for expeditions to remote parts of the world, and several times I saw talks about her adventures advertised in the local paper.
I think I would have been more surprised if Daphne had not made it to 100.
