Gawthorpe Hall

                                                    Orienteering at Gawthorpe     

Gawthorpe Hall Estate has been owned by the National Trust since 1972 with Lancashire County Council managing the hall and formal gardens. The grounds comprise approximately 15 hectares of grazing fields and 24 hectares of woodland and formal gardens. Opening times for the hall and Mooch cafe can be found on the National trust website.

The Permanent Orienteering Course (POC ) has been developed in the Estate's woods to give you a chance to try a non-competitive or leisure form of orienteering using your map reading skills to navigate around a course of markers or 'controls'. After rain parts of the woodland may be wet and boggy, suitable footwear should be worn. Take care !

There are 23 controls located in the woods. At each control there is a post with an identifying letter. There are 4 suggested line courses of increasing difficulty and length. There is also an ' all controls ' map which you can use as a score course where you visit as many controls as possible in a set amount of time, ie one hour.

You can just use the downloaded map on your phone or if you can, print the map so you can see the whole map all of the time. Just remember to put it in a clear waterproof bag so the ink does not run if you drop it. 

The maps available are;  

• Easy                 1.0 km  9 controls
• Medium 1          1.9 km  13 controls
• Medium 2          2.2 km  16 controls
• Long                 3.3 km   21 controls

The map:

Before starting study and understand your map.

1. The map scale is 1:5000. Thus 1 cm on the map is equivalent to 50 m on the ground. The contour interval is 5 m

2. Interpretation: The map symbol key describes what each symbol on the map represents

3. Orientation: Align roads, paths or other line features on the map to the feature on the ground. Or, if you have a compass, align magnetic north ( blue vertical lines on the map ) to the north needle of your compass.

4. Position: Follow your progress on the map. Know where you are at all times.

5. Out of bounds: Do not trespass into surrounding areas or those marked with purple cross-hatching.

6. Start and Finish: These are marked with a purple triangle and double circle respectively. They are together on the gate across the road just before the hall.

7. Control post positions: These are marked on the map by purple circles centered on the feature.

8. Line courses: Follow the numbers of your chosen course in order. The purple line joining controls shows the straight line distance between controls but you will have to find the route between controls that best suits you.

9. Control descriptions: The list of control descriptions on the right hand side of each map tells you what feature you are looking for e.g. Path junction, gully etc. 

10. Control letters: These are on the top left of the red and white marker an the control posts and confirm you have successfully navigated to the correct location.

Have fun !