Orienteering is a simple sport. A map, a compass and a runner. You set off at intervals, like time trials in cycling, so you can’t cheat by following someone else. You find each course marker by map reading. At each mark, your progress is logged and your time is recorded at the end. Couldn’t be simpler.

It’s more challenging than traditional cross country running because the terrain is usually much rougher and there’s no path. You have to use the map and your compass to make sense of what is ahead and pick a route that suits you. That might mean that you run a little farther to stay on flatter ground; maybe running around a hill rather than straight up and over it. In a dense woodland course, you have to rely completely on the map and the compass because the trees block your view. The other fun thing is that you can run in the same area week after week but have a completely different race because the markers are in new places.

There’s one course through a beech wood that I love. The trees are big and old and give so much shade that it keeps the undergrowth down. This wood covers a big area and if there were no trees you’d see that the terrain was covered in hillocks and valleys. Whatever course they set, you know that some of the running will be uphill and some downhill and if you’re not careful you can find yourself retracing your steps because you’ve ended up in some dead end gulch. Add a few small lakes to the mix and you can see why it’s a favourite. Stamina and navigation skills are both tested to the extreme.

There’s one other wild card on this course; there have always been rumours that there are some places where the rocks are magnetic. Every time there’s been a race there someone gets lost and they always say the same thing.

Last time Paul West turned up at the finish two hours late and looking the worse for wear. The marshals were almost ready to send out search parties. There was talk of making us all carry GPS trackers in future, but then he turned up.

‘Sorry guys, something weird with the compass, lost my bearings completely.’

‘Yeah, but two hours Paul. Sure you didn’t have a nap somewhere?’

‘Definitely the compass. I’m gonna take two the next time.’

The banter went on all the way to the pub. The strange thing is that every guy that gets lost comes back with almost exactly the same script.

Compass — strange part of the wood — went on too long before he realised — took ages to find the way back.

Always the same story, give or take one or two details. There were times it almost felt like some sort of conspiracy, or maybe the guys latched onto that script as an easy way of saving face. Two things puzzled me, it was always guys who had the problem, but as many women ran this course and it never happened to them. The other odd thing was that it only ever happened to one person in each race.

None of that put me off running; it’s not as though they disappeared forever, or came back minus a foot or permanently stupid. Whatever the mystery was it didn’t seem to do any harm.

In many ways, it was my favourite course. I loved the silence of the big trees. There were birds; I’ve heard a chiffchaff and I’ve seen a tree creeper but somehow the sound of an occasional bird deepens the silence. The ground is covered by old rotted beech leaves that cushion and deaden the sound of your feet. My breathing, raw and rasping on the climbs, a little easier going down hill, intrudes on the silence and somehow it feels as though these trees, many of them three times my age, are smirking at my hasty laboured progress. These guys have seen it all before.

I didn’t notice when my compass led me astray. I was following a bearing, glancing at it every few strides and nothing strange happened. I was counting my strides, trying to measure distance and I knew should have been close to the marker. I couldn’t see it. Maybe I shortened my stride up that mound two minutes ago, I thought; or maybe it lengthened going down into this gulley. I kept running. The sides of the little valley rose as I went forward and then it curved, so I had to follow the land and to hell with the compass. After another hundred meters of winding narrow path, it opened out in front of a pool.

Ahead of me was maybe an acre of still dark water. The place where I stood was the only place you could stand, almost as though someone had made a private beach. A beech beach, I thought, almost laughing at the pun nature seemed to have wrought. All around the margins of the pool the shore was lost in the shadow of overhanging trees, almost as though the pool disappeared into some impossible forever land.

I stopped. This was not on the map. I looked at the compass and the needle was slowly circling. It was almost hypnotic. I’ve never seen it do that. I turned a full circle myself, rotating in the opposite direction to the compass. It made no difference. The needle carried on with a mind of its own, swirling slowly around and around and around.

There was a small sound ahead of me, and I noticed ripples. I stepped closer to the edge to see better, and a girl rose out of the water. At first, there was just her head and shoulders. She flicked her long hair away from her face and for a moment I thought I must have stumbled into a film set for one of those shampoo adverts. She rose out of the water and somehow although it felt like a fairy tale I knew it had to be real because whatever those princesses get up to they don’t show naked breasts.

She smiled; a knowing, enticing, welcoming, seductive smile that made my tired legs almost turn to jelly.

‘You look hot, why not come into the water?’ she said, stepping towards me and revealing that she was naked. ‘Take off those sweaty clothes and come in. You’re lost, your time this week will be rubbish, so come and cool off.’

The compass goes haywire, I thought, and they never talk about it, and it’s always guys.

I dragged my vest off, struggling as it clung to me. She was right about the sweaty part. The shorts and footwear were easier.

‘How do you do it?’ I asked.

She laughed, and you’ll be bored to tears if I say the sound was like music rippling across the water; but it was, and somehow it didn’t feel like a cliché at all.

‘Does it matter?’ she said, sliding back into the water and taking two lazy strokes away from me.

I swam; she was right, and it didn’t matter; the race didn’t matter; the crazy compass didn’t matter. All I knew right then was that if I was lucky she might tell me what did matter.

As soon as I was swimming she increased her pace and I had to work at it to keep up. We covered maybe fifty meters until we neared a rocky bluff and as we rounded it there was a waterfall. She was maybe three meters ahead of me as she reached the shallows and stood under the cascade.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Its summer, the water’s warm.’

As I got to her she took my hand and pulled me upright and into her arms.

‘Like a dream isn’t it,’ she said.

The water bounced off me, spraying in sheets, with one stream making a kind of transparent umbrella reaching across from my head to her forehead. She moved forward, ducking under this liquid canopy and kissed me. One thing for sure, she had done that before. I’m not inexperienced; and maybe I was surprised, possibly even shocked, so I may have been a little off my best form, but she was overwhelming. Right then, in that kiss, I would have done anything for her.

Slowly she pushed me backwards against the rock so that we were hidden behind the falling water.

‘This is the best place in the world to make love,’ she said, ‘haven’t you always wanted to meet a fairy princess in a magical place?’

There was a stone ledge at the water's edge. She pulled me down on top of her, one hand on the back of my neck, the other playing with my rapidly hardening erection.

‘Slowly now Alan, all this fresh water washes away my lubrication, take your time.’

She knows my name, I thought. How on earth? That would have to wait, right now all I could think of was how to live up to what she obviously wanted. I kissed her, trying with my lips and tongue to share with her the magic I was feeling. I played with her other lips, slowly working a finger where I planned to put something else. I found her clit and traced a circle around it, suddenly thinking of that compass needle. Did she have some magnetic power? Some magic that drew me here? Concentrate, I told myself, gently, gently, remember every woman who’s ever liked what you were doing. Do it better, slower, make it worth her while.

There must have been a spell on that place. I’ll admit that sometimes I’m impatient, but not that day. I don’t know if it was the sound of the cascade or the seclusion inside the transparent stream shielding us from the outside world; or maybe even the way she seemed to respond to my every touch, but time ceased to exist. We were trapped in one long moment. Lubrication came, as she knew it would, and I sank into her and felt so good there. I worried that the rocky ledge would be too hard, and tried to take as much of my weight as I could on my elbows and knees, but she didn’t seem to care. She pulled me closer and closer, beginning to writhe in time with everything I did until we both came in a crazy explosion.

‘You were very good,’ she said. ‘I thought you would be.’

I lay beside her watching the water flow over us.

‘We are miles away from any power cables,’ I said, ‘so how do you make the magnetic field?’

‘Very good,’ she said. ‘There’s power all around us.’

‘A turbine in the stream?’

She giggled. ‘Good, very good.’

‘You know my name from the race lists.’

‘Knew it weeks ago.’

‘And the start times are advertised.’

‘You’re guessing all my secrets,’ she said.

‘The other’s have always been two hours late,’ I said.

‘Because they never guessed the trick,’ she said. ‘You could go now, if you want; but you won’t record a good time.’

‘I’ve already had the best time ever,’ I said.

‘Another right answer.’ She rolled onto her side and a finger traced it’s way across my chest and ended under my chin, gently turning my face towards her.

‘You could stay another hour.’

‘I’d like to stay forever.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not today, they would have to look for you.’

‘And they’d find the secret,’ I said. ‘How did you find it?’

‘I was a runner like you. I tripped and broke my compass. It was winter and the stream was running harder. I heard the sound of water and my leg was bleeding.’ She pointed at a scar across her knee. ‘I washed it in the pool and I think the magic caught me.’

‘How come the other guys don’t come back?’

She looked at me with a quizzical expression.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Another test… You set the magnetic field to turn them away.’ There was still a question in her eyes. ‘You lead them back to the course, let them take a bearing and then change the field.’

Her expression changed, so that I thought sunshine had broken into our little arbour.

‘You can stay forever,’ she said. ‘Starting tonight.’

I must have hesitated for a moment. ‘I’ll find you,’ she said. ‘I knew my soul mate had to be a runner with a brain like mine.’

‘And the last test is to have faith.’ I said. ‘I’d better go and check in.’

I swam back to my clothes. The compass had stopped spinning. I checked in an hour late much to the amusement of the crew.

‘Compass went haywire?’

‘Yeah, crazy isn’t it,’ I said.

I drove home, showered and was dressed before the door bell rang.

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