h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In other words: is it difficult to get permission to enter on somebodies land?
Are there restricted areas (apart from the obvious army land)
Boswell

I don't know about other countries, but in the USA, few landowners have problems with orienteering on their land. However, the local orienteering club will always get official written permission from a landowner before the area is usually mapped. Most of what is used are parks run by the gov't, which are usually okay with orienteering, though some do want proof of insurance. Some park areas aren't mapped or are marked out of bounds on account of sensitive wildlife areas, nature preserves where they don't want people going off trail, development, etc. It is generally easy to accomodate any special requests by landowners, and especially once they see that orienteering is basically harmless, most are pretty amenable. The bottom line, though, is that orienteering only uses land that the club has permission to use.

I've tried orienteering, it was pretty difficult, we just did it in a normal little park, but MAN it took us about two hours at first...

Did you try an easy course first? A lot of people make the mistake of doing a difficult course their first time thinking they know maps and stuff and it'll be no sweat - then they get totally lost (actually, we like to call it "misplaced") and wind up not finishing the course. Generally, though, if you start easy and work your way up, you get better and better at it. Even nationally-ranked competitors (like me) have to start from somewhere. Nowhere is the old addage more appropriate - practice makes perfect.

It was pretty easy, we only ended up about 100 feet from the intended ending point... we were in groups of four and everyone had different strides so when we had to try to measure from one stop to the next we had to average our paces and figure out a nice in-between, I guess it wasnt really orienteering as we measured between stations... we had to tell what was at each stop (trash can, birch tree, slide etc.) and whoever got all the stations, or the most, won... it was part of Aviation Carreer Education put on by the Idaho Department of Transportation. I recccomend, to anyone who goes into the woods... LEARN TO READ A COMPASS, if you get lost you can just follow the heading and not go in circles... I would have found my way out of a forest once had it not been for the overcast day and no compass to keep me going straight!