Edinburgh Southern Orienteering Club

Edinburgh Big Weekend 2026

EUOC's annual weekend showcasing all aspects of orienteering within Edinburgh. There are 4 separate races - night on Friday, urban on Saturday, classic and sprint on Sunday.

David Robertson reports: EUOC’s annual Big Weekend kicked off as usual with ‘Fight With The Night’ on Friday evening. The location this year was the Braid Hills on a new 1:7500 5m contours map by Alistair Pedley.

The evening started damp and it was quite windy on the highest points. The light rain soon gave way and later starters were spared.

Registration, Download and tents for a EUOC cake stall were sited just in off the Braid Hills Road at the eastern-most corner of the map. It was strung with fairy lights and looked quite festive.

The Start and Finish were close to assembly. Starts ran from 5pm to 7pm with an optional mass start on the Long course  at 6.30.

The Long course was 6.7km with 285m of climb

The Medium course was 4km with 145m of climb

The Short course was 3km with 120m climb

The Novice course was 1.8km with 45m climb

Each ‘Fight with the Night’ event this season has featured a ‘twist’ and this was to be no different. On the Long, Medium and Short courses there were Micro-O  “greens”. After a section on the main map you reached a control where there was a map flip revealing a 1:2000 extract with 2.5 m contours, mapped by Joel Atkinson. This part was a Score of around 5 controls to be taken in any order before returning and punching the last control before the map flip. The Long course had two of these Micro-O sections. The sudden change in scale caught many runners out.

If you were checking the live results on the night you will have seen dramatic changes in the finishing order due to the complicated nature of the course set up with many runners appearing to have missed controls only to be reinstated.

Well done to Luke Durnall (M10) who completed his first non-urban short fwtn.

 

ESOC results in the top half:

  • Long (108) - Ben Brown 17th, Thomas Dutton 28th, Rachel Brown 33rd, Calum Robertson 46th
  • Medium (62) - Andrew Daley 13th, Richard Oxlade 16th, Matt Tinsley 17th, David McNeish 26th, David Robertson 30th
  • Short (44) - Maggie Scrugham 18th, Judy Bell 22nd
  • Novice (13) - Emma Daley 1st

Updated FWTN league tables can be found at https://munroleagues.com/leagues/Fight%20with%20the%20Night%2025-26

 

Alison Harding writes: The Big Weekend is always buzzing with many folks coming from afar to visit our iconic city or to see their teenage student child, as we used to many years ago. Now we just get on the 47 bus which winds its way through town to deposit us at the Surgeons Hall as instructed. Much debate beforehand as to whether we needed rain visors, how many layers to wear, shorts or leggings? We decided on 2 top layers, him in shorts and me in leggings, and made our way to the far (yes far, 2km) start. And the rain held off!

The start was at the back of Calton Hill, just above London Road. Most courses had 3 or 4 controls in this wooded slope before emerging onto Leith Walk where controls were behind Toppings bookshop and around the Omni Centre. Then came the first real route choice, how to get from there to Calton Hill itself. Choices for me were either to return round Toppings, up Blenheim Place and onto the hill, or head up Leith Walk and up Calton Hill behind Howies and up the main pedestrian steps, or my choice (possibly not the best), round the Edinburgh Street food, down a huge flight of steps and up the path to Calton Hill.

There were 3 controls and then another choice with an artificial barrier front of St Andrews House. Most people chose to run East along the access road which doubles back to the old school, cross the road and head down the steps to Calton Road. I opted to go West, down the main steps, along Calton Hill, under the railway and along Calton Road. Then up to the Royal Mile where I mistakenly headed to control 12 not 11, so had to return out of some little alleyways, up the mile, into no.11 and then return to 12 - idiot! The course then moved over to Dumbiedykes where I went rather slowly to make sure I didn’t fowl it up at the end as it's a very confusing place.

So we got a great run, mostly away from people and busy roads and visiting some areas I had not been to before.

 

ESOC results in the top half:

Saturday - City race

  • MO (67) - Ben Brown 2nd, Vicente Lopez Sanchez 19th, Thomas Dutton 34th
  • WO (42) - Anna Edenbrandt 8th
  • MV (43) - Alistair Hindle 19th
  • WV (24) - Hannah Durnall 1st, Sarah McAdam 3rd, Rachael Imrie 4th, Elspeth Bleakley 7th
  • WSV (58) - Katherine Kirk 16th, Hanne Robertson 20th
  • MUV (30) - Kevin Harding 5th, Martin Caldwell 7th, Richard Oxlade 11th
  • WUV (19) - Alison Harding 3rd
  • MHV (17) - Ewart Scott 1st, Leslie Dalgleish 3rd, Ian Pyrah 5th, David Kershaw 6th
  • WHV (10) - Fiona Findlay 5th
  • MYJ (4) - Luke Durnall 1st
  • WYJ (3) - Ingrid Edenbrandt 1st
  • Open 4 (13) - Morten Hallager 1st
  • Open 5 (19) - Louise Clayton 9th

The City Race was the first in the Scottish Orienteering Urban League, with the new tables at https://oxfordfusion.com/ukul/index.cfm?Year=2026&Org=3&Test=0

 

Rachael Imrie’s take on both Sunday races: The Big Weekend sprint races were, this year, centred on Pollock Halls but started just into Holyrood Park in order to loop into St Leonard’s first. The long course featured 17 controls and loosely forming two loops of the halls of residences with a mind-bending set of L-shaped barriers within the Holland House gardens. The bulletin promised sleeping students but there were a fair few raising eyebrows at those who chose to hurtle round their accommodation on a Sunday morning.

 

Holyrood Park once again provided a variety of challenges for the Classic Races. Several of us fell at the first hurdle of managing to identify the location of the start, failing to see the tape leading up onto The Crags. The weather was better on Sunday – cold and windy but drier than the other events. Most courses had a fairly easy downward initial section to fight with vegetation interpretation for the first few controls then progressed up onto Whinny Hill… significant elevation gain unavoidable for the TD5 races! Whinny Hill’s infamous network of paths provided for tricky navigation choices and necessitated continuous close map contact or discombobulation risk. The Blue course featured a soul destroying view of Control 16 from the descent of Whinny Hill: when at the same elevation the degree of climb to be regained was painfully apparent! In the post-race chat there was much discussion of “up or around?” – having watched the routegadget I’m still not sure whether the longer flat road or the shorter ascent back to Hunter’s Bog was the better choice!

Overall, the Big Weekend was great fun, well organised and an event to be recommended. Many thanks to everyone involved!

ESOC results in the top half:

Sunday - classic

  • Brown (65) - Ben Brown 14th
  • Blue (100) - Anna Edenbrandt 2nd, James Ball 18th
  • Green (88) - Morten Hallager 4th, Matt Tinsley 6th, Richard Oxlade 13th, Tate Woodhouse 21st, Hanne Robertson 33rd=, Peter Halling 36th, Martin Caldwell 41st
  • Short Green (34) - Margaret Dalgleish 2nd, Leslie Dalgleish 5th, Lucie Hamplova 7th, Rachel Fawthrop 11th, David Kershaw 12th, Roger Scrutton 13th
  • Light Green (15) - Malcolm Mahony 8th
  • Orange (8) - Elliot Edenbrandt 1st
  • Yellow (10) - Ingrid Edenbrandt 1st, Kirsten Tinsley 5th, Frederick Heinnemann 6th
  • White (7) - Amber Clayton 4th

Sunday - sprint

  • Long (73) - Megan Brown 35th

The classic race was the first in the South of Scotland Orienteering League, with the new table at https://www.rstrain.ndtilda.co.uk/results_26/sosol/SoSOL1.htm

 

Full results are available on the Big Weekend results page https://results.euoc.co.uk/bw26/ along with Winsplits and Routegadget links.

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