All orienteering in Britain and the world is done in metric. Distances of courses are all shown in kilometres and there is not a sign of miles, yards or feet on any map or any form.

My point is that all orienteerers including myself have no problem with the use of kilometres for courses or maps and you never see anyone bemused at the metric only map. No one ever goes "8km...that's 5 miles". I dare say if courses were to begin being put in miles, people would be converting to kilometres!

I'm an Eagle Scout. I have done much orienteering in my life. On a course we were taught to pace our distances. I know my pace is about 2 yards and there are 1760 yards in a mile, so I have to walk 880 paces and I make one mile. 880 is the magic number. You can halve it, quarter it, fifth it, eighth it, or tenth it into an even number so that you know when you went those fractions of a mile. If you have a kilometer, then your pace is too short for any even denomination in meters. 2 meters is too long. You have to take some kind of distance measuring device with you.

I was interested in Richard's post, having gained points in orienteering events in the dim & distant past.

But the argument holds no more weight than 'most athletics events are in metric today'.

I visited the website of the British Orienteering Federation (BOF).

The very first event I clicked on to was on 6 May - 'The Southdown Orienteers Colour Coded Event'. The BOF gave the location for this event as 'Angmering Park, 3 miles east of Arundel'.

Next I visited an event where competitors were supposed to return their entry forms and entry fees and at the same time include a self-addressed envelope 9" x 6".

I then clicked on 'The Bluebell Bomb Run', which incorprates orienteering over the embankments of Caerwent Castle, built on a Bronze Age, Iron Age or Neolithic earthwork.

The description of the 'Bluebell Bomb Run' route states: "Many buildings are surrounded by earthworks 20 feet high, some of them on top of one another".

I concluded from all this that orienteers are a pretty Imperial lot of folk

Maybe Richard was looking for people to "bite the tackle" (so to speak) by lieing.

Fortunately it's just invoked an interesting conversation.

Sorry about that Richard.

"I concluded from all this that orienteers are a pretty Imperial lot of folk"

I'm afraid you are wrong there Tony. You look at any orienteering map today and heights are in metres and distances in kilometres. People talk in terms of kilometres when talking about course lengths as it is the accepted measurement.

Go to any event in the country and you will see signs saying for example "Start: 400m".

Go to the EBOR orienteering site: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/thebatchelors/ebor/

You will notice that in fixtures, all directions to get to the course are in kilometres.

No doubt most athletes are metric when it comes to their events.

The point I was making was that in writing about ordinary, everyday things like how far it was to an event, the size of envelopes and the height of walls, it all came out in Imperial