UBOC is hosting BUCS 2026

Become Next Year's Host

If you are interested in hosting BUCS in 2027, please fill out this form by 27th February.

Thanks

UBOC would like to thank:

• The local clubs who have helped to arrange BUCS with us - without their expertise, the weekend would not have been possible. We'd especially like to thank Bristol Orienteering Klub and North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club for organising, planning and controlling the relay and individual days respectively.
• South Wales Orienteering Club, for assistance in organising and volunteering at the individual event.
• Ben Mitchell of pre-entries, for all his work setting up BUCS specific forms for us.

Entries

Entries close 17th Feb

Instructions for every competitor:

1. Use the website or download and sign up to BUCS Play app (Web, IOS (Iphone), Google Play (Android)) if you haven’t already.
2. Navigate to “BUCS Orienteering 25-26”.
3. Sign up to either/both of “Orienteering Individual Championships 2025-26” and “Orienteering Relay Championships 2025-26”. This is to confirm your eligibility for BUCS points. You will not be charged any money at this stage.
4. Go to pre-entries and enter the “BUCS Individual Championships 2026” event. This is to collect orienteering specific information. You’ll be charged through your club at a later date.
   1. Your club should be set as your institution - let your captain know if yours isn't on there.
   2. If you expect to be out for a long time, please request an early or very early start. This preference will be ignored for seeded runners.
   3. Please write your dietary requirements for the meal in the "special requirements" box.
   4. Confirm your attendance to the meal and accomodation with the checkboxes at the end. Prices for these can be found below.
   5. Make sure to press "Set up payment" to confirm your entry.

GDPR: Sensitive information (e.g. dietary requirements) will be stored by UBOC and deleted after the weekend. Event specific information will be passed to NGOC for the purposes of running the event. This will be deleted after the weekend. Information relating to your meal and accommodation costs will be passed to your captain.

Instructions for captains and sole members of an institution:

None of your club’s entries will be competitive unless your institution’s BUCS administrator approves them. They have 2 extra days to approve your entries (19th Feb). In our experience, you need to find who this is and tell them to approve your entries. BUCS will give no leeway on this. If you miss the deadline, your team won’t be competitive. Ensure they enter all your individuals AND relay teams.

Relay Entries

Please read the "Courses" section of the relay details before continuing.

Competitive relay team order declaration: All members from your institution wishing to compete in a competitive team at the relays need to sign up via BUCS Play (even if they are a "substitute" runner). You will choose how many competitive teams to enter for your institution and assign individuals to each team with your Institution Administrator. Competitive teams can only be made up of individuals who've signed up via BUCS Play. We will not use these team declarations on the day, rather the declaration you make on pre-entries. You’ll be charged by BUCS for the number of teams you enter (rather than the number of individuals who sign up) so we'd encourage everyone who'll be present on the day to sign up on BUCS Play.

To declare your competitive team orders, navigate to pre-entries “BUCS Relay 2026” and fill out the form.

Non-competitive relay team entry: Non-competitive and partial teams should also be signed up via the same pre-entries event, marking the team as non-competitive. UBOC will invoice captains for these entries at the same rate as competitive teams less the 12.5% BUCS cut (£39.16 per team or £13.05 per individual). You may assign non-competitive teams formed of individuals from different universities yourselves. UBOC will randomly join partial teams to form full non-competitive teams after the declaration deadline.

You must assign every individual who wants to run (competitive or not) to a team within pre-entries by the 17th of Feb for invoicing. The deadline for final team order declaration will be Saturday 14th of March at 6PM.

Payment

Your institution will be invoiced by BUCS at a later date. £19.25 per individual entry, £44.75 per competitive relay team. We believe you won’t be charged for individuals who sign up for the relay via BUCS play but aren’t assigned to a competitive team.

UBOC will invoice each institution for the meal, accommodation and non-competitive relay entries before the 22rd of February. This will be at the per person rate of:

Item	Cost per person
Meal and Accommodation	£42
Meal Only	£34
Accommodation Only	£15
Non-competitive Relay Entry	£13.05

based on the answers given in the pre-entries form. We hope to receive payment by 1st of March.

Instructions for WUOC Eligible Athletes:

As the individual race is the WUOC selection race, those eligible for this but not BUCS should enter as follows: enter the pre-entries event as usual, but within the special requirements box write "WUOC Selection". We'll invoice you at the BUCS rate less 12.5% (£16.85).
Note, BUCS eligibility rules can be found here.

Friday Night Accommodation

If you're travelling a long distance you may want to book accommodation for Friday night. There are plenty of village halls and scout huts in and around Bridgend which are likely to be cheap to hire. UBOC has a lead for a hall located in Shirehampton, just off the M5 and about 1 hours drive to the day 1 event parking. Please get in contact with us for more information. We encourage groups to coordinate amongst themselves through the WhatsApp group.

Saturday 14th March - Individual Event at Merthyr Mawr

Final details will be provided in PDF format when finalised.

Details of associated public event can be found here

Key Information

• Courses close at 16:00. You must report to download by 16:15.
• Full leg cover is mandatory.
• Competitors must start at their allocated start time.
• You must punch both the start and finish.
• Bring some cash for the NGOC Café.

Car Parking

Parking for the event will be in a field about 900m short of the Candleston Car Park. The narrow lanes are unsuitable for coaches. Take care walking along the road to Assembly from the event car park, as it will be used by vehicle traffic during the day.

W3W: ///upon.plug.nation This is the entrance to the event parking field.

Postcode: CF32 0LS. Drive on past the church on arrival at the post code, and the parking field is 400m further on, on the left.

Assembly, Start, Finish and Spectator Control

Assembly is adjacent to Candleston Car Park.

The Start and Finish will be in sight of each other very close the this public car park. The spectator control is similarly close, but located to the north west of the car park.

Map

A4, Scale 1:10,000, 2.5m contours, for A courses and Mens B. 1:7,500, 2.5m contours, for C courses and Womens B, all subject to final controlling.

Loose control descriptions will be available in the start lanes.

Maps for all courses and classes will not be collected from runners at download, but will be folded and taped to hide the course. All runners are trusted not to show their maps or discuss their courses with runners yet to start.

Terrain

Courses

BUCS Class	Technical Difficulty	Spectator Control	Approx. Length (TBD)
Men A	5	Yes	10km
Women A, Men B	5	Yes	8km
Women B	5	No	5.0km
Women C, Men C	3	No	4.0-5.0km

Start/Closure

One start for all courses.
Start window 11:30-14:30. Top competitors on A courses will be seeded.
Courses close at 16:00, you must report to download by 16:15 or risk disqualification.

All competitors will be assigned a start minute. You MUST start on this minute, which means you MUST be present at the start 5 minutes before this time to move through the start lanes. If you miss your call up you'll be placed in the next available slot. For seeded runners this will likely be after the end of the block

Punching

SI touch free punching is enabled, but all runners must punch both Start and Finish.

Facilities

Toilets will be available in the event car park. There is also a fairly tatty toilet block in Candleston public car park.

The NGOC pop-up café will be present in the Assembly area. This includes tea, coffee and potentially a selection of sweet treats. Please note that it operates a cash only honesty system. If you have no cash, you can pay via card at registration, subject to a minimum charge of £1.

Safety and Photography

Important: Please note that as from 1 January 2026 Non-members of British Orienteering are not insured under British Orienteering’s public liability policy. By entering this event, you acknowledge that you are participating at your own risk.

Orienteering is an adventure sport. All runners take part at their own risk and are responsible for their own safety.

The competition area is used by the public, in particular by horse riders, and, towards the Eastern edge of the map, race horse training jockeys. Please allow horses space and obey any requests from riders.

The road between the event car park and Assembly, which is next to Candleston public car park, is narrow and will be used by members of the public, and competitors prepared to pay and display (and who can find a space!). Please go carefully along the road between your car and the event.

A risk assessment has been completed, and a copy will be held at Enquiries and Download in case competitors wish to consult it before their run.

A first aid kit and trained first aiders will be available at Enquiries and Download.

It's highly likely a photographer will be present and photos will be distributed via British Orienteering media outlets. If you do not wish for your photos to be used in this way, please contact the organiser.

Orienteering is a great sport for young people. If you bring children, please help us to keep to our safeguarding policy and British Orienteering’s photography policy.

By entering this event, competitors agree to abide by the British Orienteering Code of Conduct.

When participating in our events/activities your name may appear in the results section of this website or in newspaper reports. To see how we look after your personal data, please read NGOC's privacy policy.

NGOC follows British Orienteering’s national guidance. This provides a sensible balance between the benefits and risks associated with the taking and use of images. If you are unsure about acceptable practice, please speak to the event organiser.

Officials

• Organiser: Pat Macleod (NGOC), pat@patsmail.uk
• Planner: Sophie Jones (TVOC)
• Controller: Richard Cronin (NGOC)

Saturday Evening

Showers

After the individual race, it’s an hour's drive back to Bristol where we’ve arranged for the use of University of Bristol sports hall showers located at University of Bristol's Indoor Sports Centre on Tyndall Avenue. What3words: ///common.ends.fuel (Available here)
There is on-street pay and display parking nearby (e.g. Tyndall Avenue, St Michael’s Park). Parking can be purchased through the RingGo app.
Access is available all afternoon and early evening but please aim to stagger your entry so we don’t overwhelm the facilities!

Accommodation

Hall floor near Bristol city centre - details will be sent to the WhatsApp Captains chat prior to the weekend.

Evening Meal and Social

The evening meal will be hosted at an Indian restaurant in Bristol from 7pm.

After the meal, we'll head to a pub, where we have a private room booked between 21:30 and 23:30.

After this, we'll head to a club.

Costumes

Costumes will be released soon after entries close.

Sunday 15th March - Relay Event at Clevedon Court

Final details will be provided in PDF format when finalised.

Details of associated public event can be found here

Car Parking, Assembly, Start and Finish

Parking and Assembly:
Clevedon School Sports Centre, Valley Road, Clevedon BS21 6AH.
What3words: ///aside.town.gates (Available here)
The entry to Valley Road is off the B3124 Clevedon to Portishead Road.
Signed to ‘Sports Centre’. Park in the school car park or in the overflow area as directed.
Parking is about a 750m (60m climb) walk from the start and finish.

Event arena, for the Start, handovers and Finish:
Based out of the Norton Wood Quarry area. Approximate What3words: ///groups.unhappily.publisher (Available here)

Terrain

Map

TBD. Drawn by Trevor Crowe in 2017, selectively updated for BUCS.

Courses

Men’s and Women’s. Estimated winning times of 30-35 minutes.

Traditionally, an Ad Hoc relay course has been offered at BUCS. As the area can only really offer TD4 level courses we won’t provide a separate course. Instead, we encourage novice runners of all genders to enter into non-competitive teams on the Women's course (this should be done by your captain).

Women are competitive in men’s teams. Teams of competent orienteers from different universities may enter either course but must state their team as non-competitive.

Start/Closure

First mass start: 10:00
Second mass start: 10:10
Mini mass start for all remaining legs: TBD
Course closure: TBD

Punching

SI and SIAC (contactless) electronic punching.
All competitors must punch the Finish, and then Download promptly.

Facilities

Toilets and changing rooms are available at the School Sports Centre.
Please remove dirty O-shoes before entering the building.
A First Aider will be in attendance based at the Gym.

Safety

Please be aware and courteous of other users including dog walkers.
Please look out for all the large crags in the area. Some will be taped with black/yellow tape which must not be crossed. Others may also be unsafe to climb so please be sensible and do not take unnecessary risks.
The large quarry in the north of the map is now in private ownership and is marked as out of bounds. Please stay well clear. A former quarry in the middle of the map will be taped.
Competitors take part at their own risk and are responsible for their own safety. If travelling alone or with relevant pre-existing medical conditions you may wish to notify the Organiser.

Officials

• Organiser: Kate Bosher (BOK), kbosher99@gmail.com, 07342 782953
• Planner: Adam Potter (BOK)
• Controller: Charles Daniel (BOK)

Photography

TBD.
There may be a photographer at this event and at the prize giving for the BUCS event. If taken these pictures will be available on the BOK website after the event.
Please contact the organiser if you or any member of your family does not wish to be included in any photographs or have them displayed on the club’s social media.