Harlequin's membership and mapped areas fall within an area centred just West of Birmingham. Bounded in the West by Leominster, in the North Walsall and Dudley, in the South Malvern and in the East the M42. These boundaries are not formalised and there is a fair degree of overlap with our neighbour clubs WRE, WCH, OD, COBOC & NGOC. About half of our membership lives in Birmingham with concentrations in Kidderminster, Worcester, the Malvern/Ledbury area and the Black Country. Our better small orienteering areas lie on an outcrop of sandstone running from Stourport, North East to Himley. We have access to badge and championship terrain in the Wyre forest and hills in South Shropshire/North Herefordshire

Harlequins are large, long established and successful orienteering club. We currently have 171 membership units, giving a total of around 296 members. We are affiliated to, and play an active role in the West Midland Orienteering Association (WMOA) and through the association are affiliated to the British Orienteering Federation (BOF).

There is still some argument about exactly when the club was founded, the generally agreed date is April 1st 1968. In our early years we absorbed Halesowen Orienteering Club and spawned Wrekin Orienteering Club. An official history of the club does exist, somewhere, - if the preceding link works then we have found it. For the unofficial history - see links to the left

Amongst our membership we have some very competitive orienteers. In 2003 Harlequins had 8 West Midlands champions:

• M55 John Pearson
• M60 Rollo Rumford
• M65 Colin Spears
• M75 Chris Schaaning
• W21 Claire Unitt
• W40 Marion White
• W50 Ruth Lockely
• W 65 Alison Sloman

The club won the West Midlands League and our Juniors won their class at the Harvester Relays

In 2004 three club members became British Champions in their repspective classess:

• M55 Andy Hemsted
• W18B Sam Chambers
• M20A Sam Evans

the C3 events this year are at Breakneck Bank (spring) and Haugh Wood (autumn)

Member Hannah Wooton has represented Great Britain and was a member of the succesful World Student Relay team. Robert Farrington and Andy Hemstead have represented England in 2002, and Brian Hughes has run for Wales.

We are also fortunate to have a wealth of experience in mapping, planning and organising events

---

Each year Harlequins aims to put on one event at C4 and above per month - we are fortunate that we have an active mapping team and 45+ mapped areas so we are able to achieve this without overloading any one area. See the fixtures page for our forthcoming programme.

Normally we hold 2 badge events each year plus the occasional national competition BOC'93 and BOC2000, day one of JK'94, NE1 2000 and JK 2005. Badge events for 2004 are Breakneck Bank (Spring) and Haugh Wood* (Autumn]

*subject to landowner permission.

In addition to our colour coded and  'come and try it events' we have a program of night street events every winter which culminates in the 'Bewdley Mountain Marathon', annual flooding of the river Severn making local knowledge (or water-wings) the deciding factor.

Each summer we run a number of low key training events  (S.E.E.) - normally on a Tuesday or Thursday evening. We have an annual Hash and the 'June Jaunter' - the nearest you can get to a fell race within 10 miles of Birmingham City Centre.

The popular series of Saturday Morning Introductory Low-key Events continue to introduce beginners and schoolchildren to the sport.