East of Scotland Orienteering Championships and SOSOL 3, Kinnoull, Deuchny and Murrayshall, 26.10.03
The traditional TAY event sunshine appeared as expected, Kinnoull looked glorious in its autumnal colours, and some excellent pre event publicity in the P.A. and at local schools ensured a bumper turnout of well over 250 participants, many of them local families.
Car parking worries were dispelled as the cars stopped arriving a few yards short of a full house; the SportIdent system performed ok with only a few wobbles; and no controls ‘vanished’ despite some fears.
But what really mattered was that all of the people I spoke to enjoyed their run, and what appeared to be half of the under 10’s in Scotland were having a great time on the string course. Here’s hoping we see them at future events.
There were no visible problems with the many other users of the area; even the mountain bikers were happy as they used our parking track to ferry their bikes to the top of the hill!
Many thanks to all of the TAY team who turned up and made my job easy on the day, and to those who helped in the days before, sometimes at very short notice. All I had to do was keep the drinks (kindly supplied by TESCO – Edinburgh Road) topped up and occasionally empty the bins. It’s worth noting that the only rubbish I needed to clear up was a couple of sweetie wrappers.
A particular mention must go to Dave Prentice who seemed to be resident in Deuchny for several weeks before the event, only coming out to have his picture taken for the PA, before rushing off to compete in the KIMM.
Davie Frame
The 3 sections of the new map are very different in nature. I was keen to have at least some courses experiencing the open areas of Murrayshall, which we were using for the first time. However, this event also marked the relaunch of Kinnoull Hill, where each map revision allows better use of the intricate nature of the contours and the path network. I therefore tried to give those on the longer courses a quick taster of Murrayshall but still bring them back to finish in Kinnoull.
Deuchny has some tough areas, but also some very pleasant patches, and Dave Prentice is to be commended for the many hours he has spent there recently creating a little bit of designer-orienteering with the help and full cooperation of the Forestry Commission. This has opened up more options for getting through the worst of the green.
There were a number of restrictions on the planning, most noticeably the narrow neck between Kinnoull and Deuchny which led to a great deal of congestion in that area. I also planned to avoid both the actual and the alternative car-parking areas, but inevitably quite a few runners still opted for the forest road when leaving Deuchny. I tried not to duplicate too much from the Jamie Stevenson event held on Kinnoull in August.
I make two apologies. Firstly to the Green competitors, who could see control 5 from control 4 because I had placed the flag carelessly. Secondly to everyone for the close proximity of the closing controls and the string course, which I know led to some confusion. That was not well planned and I only hope that it did not detract from your enjoyment of a pleasant area on a fine autumn day.
Donald Smith
This was not the easiest of events for the Planner and Organiser, what with the new map becoming available in its final form only 3 days before, and with the car parking situation uncertain up to the day before. However, both of them coped extremely well, particularly seeing it was their first attempts at the jobs. We were blessed with good weather and all the comments that I heard were very favourable.
The new area was not the easiest to plan, with the constriction at the Jubilee carpark, but Donald managed to produce a very good set of courses. A few of you found yourselves running through the finish before you were finished, but I blame poor route choice for that!
My thanks go to Donald & Davie for an excellent day, and to all the willing helpers, particularly those who set up & operated the computers.
Chris Reid
The "Mister Men" string course at Kinnoull proved to be a big hit. Our last few ventures into the running of string courses tended to lead to between 6 and 20 participants. Being optimistic, we copied 30 maps only to find on the day that 50 were needed. Thanks to all those who were kind enough to return their maps for "recycling".
While the string course isn't really about times, a number of young orienteers decided to compete against themselves and do the course twice (or even 3 times in one case), each time going faster. If only we could all do that. Would there really be queues for people rerunning the Brown course for a third time in the hope of omitting previous errors?
Anyway, congratulations to all those who took part; and thanks to those who pointed out that Mr Strong is in fact red and not green. We feel quite chastened and promise to check the facts in future. Apologies to the Strong family.
Brian and Catriona Williams