Herringbone
Orientation task in which a central spine line with side ticks shows the roads a route passes without turning into them.
The herringbone, also called a fishbone, is a classic task in orientation rallying. Instead of a roadbook with tulips, the crew receives a schematic drawing resembling a fish skeleton: a continuous central line represents the route to be driven, with short ticks branching off to the left and right. These ticks stand for roads the crew passes without turning into them.
The crew's task is to find a way through the real road network in which the side roads are passed in exactly the order shown and on the correct side, left or right. The central line is usually read from bottom to top. Read it correctly and you follow the intended route flawlessly; a misread quickly leads you astray. The herringbone is therefore one of the most popular and at the same time trickiest orientation tasks.
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Related terms
Orientation rally
Event format where finding the correct route from tricky roadbook instructions matters – not speed (often abbreviated Ori).
Bol-pijl
A Dutch-Belgian navigation system: at each junction a dot ('bol') marks your position and an arrow ('pijl') shows the direction to take. Read from left to right.
Ingetekende lijn
A Benelux navigation system: the route to be driven is pre-drawn on the map as a continuous line and must be followed as accurately as possible in the forward direction.