Michael Green

Last updated: Thu 30 Jan 2025

We have heard that Michael, a long-time former member of the Club, has died of a heart attack. 

Michael's funeral will take place on Tuesday 18th February at 12.15pm at East Devon Crematorium, Whimple.

People have commented on their happy memories of AGMs hosted by Michael and Judy in their garden, which very conveniently adjoined the Fire Beacon area. Michael took on many roles for the Club, including as Treasurer and mapper. Roger Green has written some memories of the Greens involvement with the club below:

Reminiscences with Michael Green

Michael was a very active member of the club. He and I worked for South West Water Authority and our paths occasionally crossed. Me in Land Drainage and him in the legal department, dealing with land and planning.

He became the club’s Access Officer, especially as he knew all the owners of land and obtained permission from landowners to use their land for orienteering.

For his job he got about in his Short Wheelbase Land Rover, which he also used when there were emergencies with problems in snow and floods and vehicles which needed towing out of ditches etc. The Landrover had a motorised towing cable fixed at the front. He also used it to tow out orienteers from muddy fields used for event parking.

Michael also became the Mapping Officer. This was in the days of when maps were drawn by hand and the finished maps were commercially printed at 1000 or so at a time. Courses were copied by hand from Master maps on boards usually in the open.

Michael, with Gerald Woodley ( Beth’s grand father), produced the first Fire Beacon map which was used many times before it got out of date and is still updated regularly.

Then came OCAD which was used for planning events and purple course maps were printed on to our existing maps. I took over this job from Michael of printing courses on to maps.

I also took the large number of printed maps which Michael had looked after at home.

Michael and Judy kept horses on their land next to their house below Fire Beacon Hill. They also did harness racing with their horses. Every so often we would go to see Michael and Judy and excavate high quality manure and take it home for gardening.

Their large field had space for small marquees and the club had several AGM’s held at Michael Green’s place.

Roger Green