Interland 2026: Solo for England in Calais Ballet
Nineteen brave runners waged the four-hour trip to Calais last weekend to represent Luxembourg Orienteering in the 2026 edition of the Interland Cup, an annual competition of six orienteering federations. The northern French club of Boussole Audomaroise, organizing this year’s event on behalf of the Hauts-de-France league, put on a challenging two-day programme consisting of a Saturday afternoon training just south of Calais in an area heavily affected by allied bombing during World War II, with lots of water-filled craters and depressions, a lovely night sprint in the Calais beach area, and the Interland proper in a forest just outside a village with the poetic name Tournehem-sur-la-Hem. There was nothing poetic about the actual map, a typical northern French mixture of brambles, fairly monotonous forested areas criss-crossed with rides and some nice runnable segments. The organizing club made the most out of the available terrain though, setting smart, very fast courses with a surprising number of route choices. Coupled with fantastic weather (blue sky all day!) and a very convivial atmosphere, this made for a great day out. Sadly, Lux O’s result wasn’t that great, but that was to be expected – our team was depleted after several last-minute withdrawals and we simply couldn’t compete with the other federations, most of which filled all 42 available spots per team. That said, we lost the battle for the fifth place to the Dutch by a mere three points (64-67), which is a promise for the future - next year’s edition will be for us to organize in Luxembourg and we should therefore be in a position to mobilize a full field of runners. And who won this year, you ask? Do you remember that famous quote by Gary Lineker, “Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win"? Well, that quote could be applied to the English orienteering team – however tight this six-way match may be, they usually emerge victorious. This year, EOC successfully defended their 2025 title by five points ahead of the Flemish federation, followed by FRSO and LHFCO. All eyes will now be on 28 February, 2027 – a historic first Interland on Luxembourgish soil.
