Edinburgh Southern Orienteering Club

ELO Festive Frolic 2019John Muir Country Park, 28 December

ESOC members headed the results at the ELO Christmas score event.

East Lothian Orienteers held their annual Festive Frolic at John Muir Country Park, on the East Lothian coast near Dunbar. The event centre was at East Links Family Park, and the start and finish were nearby. The terrain includes fairly flat mature pine forest with a good path network and coastal fringe of open dunes, more extensive dunes covered in marram grass beyond the saltmarsh on Spike Island, and slightly hillier terrain and mature deciduous forest in the SW part, near Foxlake.

The event was a 60-minute score, with a mass start and penalty points for anyone late back. There were 16 controls shown on the map, each worth 10 points. Another 16 bonus controls, each worth 20 points, were not shown on the map. Each of the mapped controls had a bonus control associated with it, and had a map extract showing four possible locations, plus a puzzle to work out which one was the actual location. Bonus controls could be visited at any time, and some people were lucky enough to spot one without having to work out the puzzle. There were also 2 further bonus controls without clues (a decorated Christmas tree, and a “Santa panda” sitting on a chair), making a maximum possible score of 520 points.

The weather was fine and mild, though breezy at the shore.

This year there were 128 competitors. The ESOC prizewinners included:
Andrew Lindsay – 1st overall, and 1st man
Ben Brown – 2nd overall, and 1st junior man
Rachel Brown – 3rd overall, and 1st woman
Jo Stevenson – 4th overall, and 1st senior woman
Rona Lindsay – 2nd senior woman

Other ESOC members in the top half of the results were: Will Warlow (23rd), Ben Murphy (25th), George Lupton (27th), Martin Caldwell (30th), Finlay Ross (31st), Crawford Lindsay (32nd), Sally Lindsay (39th), Maggie Scrugham (40th), Megan Brown (41st), Judy Bell (44th), Anne Stevenson (49th), Connor Lupton & Fraser Lupton (50th=), Alastair Lessells (55th), Timothy May (56th), Mark Wood (60th).

Full results, including Routegadget and more details about the event, are available in the Festive Frolic 2019 news item on the ELO website.

Other entries categorised under: Event Reports