April Social 2024Edinburgh, New Town, Tuesday, 16th April
Matt Ball writes:
It was a lovely evening and perfect for running in North Edinburgh (I discovered it was pouring with rain in south Edinburgh on my cycle home!) for the April social. People could again choose between an orienteering and a TURF event. For those of us orienteering we started off the evening outside the The Cumberland Bar in the New Town.
This was my first time here and it’s a lovely pub. At least if the orienteering didn’t go well, the social was going to be great! Heidi had organised a great event for us. She’d told us before hand we’d need the MapRun app so for myself at least that was a downloaded and a quick registration before the start. It was a score event format and we had the usual 60 minutes to get as many of the 29 controls as possible. There were 6 of us doing the event which meant as the clock struck 7pm we all scattered in different direction. I really enjoyed the format of just using my phone and decided not to zoom out at first but just go for the checkpoints I could see on the screen. This set me off on a pretty good route and it was a great course too, taking in sights such as the Water of Leith, Inverleith Park and the rabbit warren of lanes and alleyways in Stockbridge and the New Town. We all made it back to the Cumberland Bar within the hour but the towering nature of the buildings meant a few folk were not able to get a signal to “check in” at the finish control despite running around in circles with phones held aloft. This didn’t affect the result though….which were, Alison and Catherine winning 1st and 2nd Female and Matt and Kevin winning 1st and 2nd males respectively.
Many thanks to Heidi for organising and to everyone taking part. When we got into the pub the TURFers started to congregate there to. We were very much outnumbered this time but Mark can tell you about that….
Mark(MarkkuEsoc) writes:
On this occasion we had 9 Turfers in total and for the first time in a while cycle Turfers were also made welcome and they numbered 3 and not surprisingly it was a cyclist that top scored. Turfer féarglas set 48 zones (named as Eurovision winners, song titles - now that took some working out!) in the exact opposite direction from the orienteering so we got to experience Canonmills, Warriston and Bonnington with its many old railway lines converted to paths and cycle ways. Thus for an urban event it was delightful to be away from traffic for a large portion of time.
For the first half of the event it was really tight at the top with the lead regularly changing hands between MuttsCycles, JammyDognut and ESOCWalter (a very impressive performance from ESOCWalter here given he was on foot), ultimately though it was MuttsCycles who prevailed in his maiden Turf event. A choice to take zones furthest away from the pub and in the quieter (Turfers wise) area of the event in the second half saw him boost his points per hour (pph) and take a decisive lead that was not to be challenged. JammyDognut took second place and ESOCWalter put yours truly to shame by beating my cycling efforts with his running abilities. Though when the 'sweat factor' was taken into account it was clear to see who had put in by far the greater effort! Congratulations also to FeTaTo and Aibo who were the 2nd and 3rd foot Turfers.
At the close of the event we retired to the excellent Cumberland Bar to make new and old acquaintances and muse over strategy and tactics. Thank you to féarglas for an excellent set of zones; of a good size and many that could be taken from multi-levels which added to the enjoyment. Similarly the zones had been set so there was always plenty of route choice available.
Not only did MuttsCycles win the event but he also had time to record it!, see Cycle Turf
Full results and details of the Turf event can be seen on the ESOC FTT #16 event page of the Turf website.
See this document for a description of how a Turf event works: Participating in a Turf Event