When HOC was formed in 1968 orienteering in the UK was evolving rapidly. The previous twelve months had seen the formation of the British Orienteering Federation and the staging of the first National Championships in Hamsterley Forest but the purpose drawn orienteering map was still a thing of the future; 1:25000 OS maps were used, sometimes with corrections, and control descriptions either contained the definite article (signifying the feature was on the map) or the indefinite article (signifying it wasn’t!).

Few courses were offered at events and it is fair to say that the sport was dominated by males in the 20-40 age bracket. On the whole, winning times were much longer than on modern courses (the standard of the maps had a lot to do with this) and times of more than 3 hours were quite common. The West Midlands had two main open clubs – OD and HDOC; the latter was soon to merge with Harlequins.

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1969 began with the formal merger of Harlequins Orienteering Club and Halesowen and District Orienteering club on the 13th January.