ELO Festive Frolic 2022Vogrie Country Park, 28 December
East Lothian Orienteers hold a Christmas score event each year, always with an ingenious twist.
ELO’s traditional Christmas event is always fun, and this year was no exception, featuring a puzzle in the style of “Only Connect”.
Vogrie Country Park is SE of Edinburgh, near Gorebridge, and has varied terrain, including parkland, the steep-sided wooded valley of the Tyne Water, and an old golf course. The weather was dull, but the forecast rain held off until almost the end of the event, though it was quite wet when everyone was working out their bonus points.
The event was a 60-minute score, with a mass start and penalty points for anyone late back. There were 24 controls on the map, each worth 10 points, with a picture at each control. The pictures belonged in six groups of four, and it wasn’t immediately obvious which ones went together. Punching two controls in the same group without punching any other controls in between gave 10 bonus points, punching three in sequence gave 30 bonus points, and punching the correct four that made up a group gave 50 bonus points. The full set of pictures was on the back of the map, showing which picture was at which control. Some people worked out a route before starting; others trusted to luck. There were two additional controls not on the map (Santa Panda and Big Brown Bear) which were also worth 10 points and were allowed to be punched without upsetting a sequence.
This year there were 88 competitors, and ESOC’s best results came from Jo Stevenson (5th overall, 2nd W), and Hamish Simmers (6th overall, 4th M).
Other ESOC members in the top half of the results were:
Rachel Rose (13th), Robert Simmers (29th), Maja Robertson (35th), Hanne Robertson (37th), William Atkinson + Emma Anderson (40th), Charles Gunn-Russell (43rd), Calum Robertson (44th).
Full results and more details about the event are available in the Festive Frolic 2022 page on the ELO website.
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