Thank you to everyone who came along and made this TAY's biggest Christmas event ever. Thanks also to Blair Athol Distillery for again providing us with car parking, and to the landowners for the use of Blackspout. What a lovely mild, dry day we had.
The wood is named after the 60m waterfall on the Edradour Burn that runs through the mapped area. It was this waterfall and its gorge that gave me the most pause for thought in planning. Although we'd originally intended to have one course for all, I decided that I would keep the juniors on the near side of Edradour Burn and only give them 17 of the 25 controls (and a 50 minute time limit as opposed to 60 minutes for seniors). I also researched and publicised an off-map crossing of the burn, so less agile seniors could easily cross both top and bottom, without tackling the steep, loose slopes.
To provide a challenge, I tried to choose control sites that would be as technical as possible in such a compact area. Inevitably, many of them were on or extremely close to line features. I hoped this would mean that there were sufficient easy pickings for juniors and novices. The pattern of controls was designed to give a choice of routes and to require cross country navigation, rather than path running, to make optimum use of the time.
I was staggered just how good a use of time some of you made. No sooner had I set the late starters off and poured out a cup of coffee, and the winner – Marcus Pinker – came storming in looking for a Finish official. Jack Barrett was the only person to get full points in time on the shorter course, so FVO members won both senior and junior courses. If it had been a club competition, FVO would have wiped the board, as they had many excellent times (don't we just love our neighbours!).
The great unknown came in the form of Bonus Christmas Controls (you had no idea what you were looking for and I had no idea how well you would cope with them!). Originally I was going to put a map extract on the relevant controls, showing the position of the extra "bonus control", but I then imagined the scrum that could ensue trying to read it (and the work involved in preparing all those snippets). So I reverted to giving instructions (distance and bearings) on the punch sheet for orienteers to follow.
The "bonus controls" were all within 100m of a marked control and I included descriptions of their locations, so I hoped that even people not using a compass would find them. By the look of your punch sheets, the majority of people (both junior and senior) collected most of the bonus controls near the marked controls they visited, although a few ignored them completely (and consequently had fewer points).
Sunday evening saw me poring over sheets of paper in various states of bedraggledness. I was extremely lenient in scoring the punches and took anything that sounded vaguely right for the bonus controls. One senior described bonus 19 as "white berries with leaves" – maybe someone could introduce him to mistletoe this Christmas. I liked the description of bonus 24 as a "grotto (tinsel and twig)". The fiercest arguments seemed to be over whether bonus 7 was an angel or a fairy (either counted).
A large percentage of the entrants – 31 people in all – went on to lunch at the East Haugh Hotel. I'm sorry I hadn't managed to identify the top TAY runners by then – it was Davie Frame on the senior course and Duncan Raitt & Angela Dixon on the junior. The Bidwell family, who are not affiliated to a club but are presumably local, deserve special mention for coming second on the junior course.
I am very grateful to Liz Fraser, the organiser, who took much of the event work off my hands, and her assistant Leslie Fraser. Thanks must also go to Andrew, my partner – a non-orienteer, who has the canny habit of turning up to Christmas events where lunch is on offer. This time he earned his meal, helping me put out controls, run the start and finish, and calculate results. Last, but by no means least, thank you to John Anderson, Moira Laws, Donald Smith and David Williamson, the control collectors.
Felicity Martin
Bonus points were awarded for finding the following…
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