The job was made relatively easy by the hard work put in by David and Rhys and the excellent response from club members. I think everyone who was asked and who was going to be at home came along and helped. As a result the organisational work went smoothly, helped by the dry, albeit cold weather - it had been glorious on Saturday.
The use of the forest road looks as though it will be the future solution for parking in the area, and it was very decent of Forest Enterprise to provide a shed for the results (and a picnic table). A mountain biker whose car came within 5 mins of being locked in was the only (known) near disaster.
Let me know if you have lost a small child’s mauve glove or if you found a pair of Silva orienteering shoes (01738 583 345).
Thanks for coming along and making it a successful event.
Dave Prentice
Kinnoull is a beautiful woodland for orienteering - very runnable, with a number of tricky control sites to provide challenging navigation for the longer courses, yet with plenty of line features for the short courses. Unfortunately, the popularity of Kinnoull with the general public means that the path system is constantly changing...as several of you seemed to find out. This makes navigation that little bit more tricky, and although the current map certainly deserves a revision, it'll always be difficult to keep regular tabs on the path network.
I had a few challenges when planning. Firstly, could I fit decent length Blue and Brown courses into the area? As it turned out, I just about managed, with various loops and split master-maps. In fact the hilliness of the area was a bigger factor than I thought it would be, and so some times on the Orange, Light Green and Green were a bit longer than I would have liked. My apologies to anyone who felt the courses were physically a bit on the tough side
Secondly, the extra paths not on the map, plus some on the map which had all but disappeared, made planning the White, Yellow and Orange a little harder than expected. Hopefully all competitors on those courses weren't affected too much.
Thirdly, with the popularity of the woodland for Sunday walkers, I was a bit worried that some of the controls might be moved or taken. To counter this, we had two gallant club members, Arthur Philp and Allan Downie, patrol the area, armed with mobile phones in case of emergency. As it turned out, we had no trouble at all, and my paranoia was completely unjustified!
I hope everyone enjoyed their courses, and appreciated Kinnoull at its autumn best.
Finally, my thanks to Rhys for his advice on the courses, and to all those club members who assisted with putting out/taking in controls.
David Sloan
to be completed
Rhys Stanwix