Hair of the Dog Social - 2016Saturday 2 January
If you didn't make it along to the ever-popular "Hair of the Dog", you missed a great day: some fun orienteering at Blackford Hill followed by a party at St Ninian's church hall in Corstorphine.
Ben Bate tells the story of the orienteering element of the Hair of the Dog, which was held at Blackford Hill:
As all ESOCers know, the 2nd of January is sacrosanct. It is Hair of the Dog Day, when those of us in town head off to the chosen venue, bid fellow club members a ‘Happy New Year’ and partake of our first orienteering event of the New Year. Each year a different person is approached and asked to plan the event. There are rules and considerable history which cannot be ignored: it must be different from the average orienteering offering;different from recent Hair of the Dog events; it has to be local; it has to be short; it has to be suitable for all age groups and hopefully not too complex or convoluted so that the average orienteer can pick up the gist within the first few moments. No pressure on the planner then, particularly when you consider that about 50% of those turning up have been responsible for a previous Hair of the Dog!
This year the event was planned and organised by Rona and Andrew Lindsay. Rona had decided on a Blackford Hill Score event - (a score event means that runners can visit the controls in any order, do not have to visit them all and there is a penalty for taking more than the allotted time – 45 minutes in this case). However, being a Hair of the Dog Event it had to have a twist, well at least one. This year the runners did not get a map each, on the basis that we all know the area well enough to be able to navigate without one, and we were each given 5 playing cards and told that at each control, as well as being a map of the complete course, there were 3 playing cards. We were allowed to swap just one card at each control and being ESOCers, I am sure that is what we did. Punching a control gave a runner 10 points and using the 5 playing cards to make a poker hand gave more points. A full house, 3 of a kind and a pair, gave 80 points for example, more points for a better poker hand and fewer for a poorer poker hand. Clearly the poker element demanded attention!
Rona explained the format and rules and sent runners off in groups of 5 after they had spent a moment or two looking at the map of all the controls. Those moments were used to decide the general pattern of controls to be visited and, more importantly, the position of the first control to be located. Once the first control was reached, a playing card could be swapped and the position of the next control memorised. And so on …………with a careful eye kept on the elapsed time as one minute late would wipe out 10 points.
What a good game it was! Well done to Rona and Andrew for planning and organising. All the controls I visited were in the right place, the master map was accurate, the poker hands added another interesting dimension and Rona was quite right - who needs a map of Blackford Hill? All the best ESOC for 2016 and thanks again to Rona and Andrew.
Results - for those with a keen interest in such things!
Prizes were awarded as follows:
1st Claire Ward + highest bonus score
2nd Andrew Dalgleish + fastest to all controls
3rd Walter Clark
First veteran male: Martin Caldwell
First veteran female: Alison Cunningham
First supervet male: John McLaren
First supervet female: Sheila Strain
1st Junior: Jamie Flett
2nd Junior: Adam Clark
3rd Junior: Megan Brown
Maureen Brown takes up the story now with details of the party:
After running off the excesses of Christmas and the New Year at Blackford Hill in the morning, around 40 club members felt ready for another round of festive cheer at the post-run social in Corstorphine. 4 Club members had been prevailed upon to make a huge pot of soup each and these plus some lovely crusty bread bread and tea, coffee and soft drinks were organised in advance. The remainder of the food and drinks had been brought along by members - a veritable pot-luck spread! Everyone sat down to eat at one of the tables, chat to mates - discussing the morning's courses and at the same time trying to solve the puzzles which had been provided for us. Naturally this was taken very seriously, as it had been rumoured that there would be prizes for the best entries. There were further serious competitions to follow - the annual "Newspapers competition" (a close competition, but won in the end by the stronger Ladies' team); a "Christmas Song" puzzle which involved a search of the premises to find the clues; and finally the very competitive and very popular "teddy bear" knock-out races. This year the junior competition was won by Jamie Flett and the senior competition was won by Jeremy Wray. As usual, the junior and senior winners played off against each other and Jeremy came out the winner after a spirited race against Jamie. Prizes for all the games were of the chocolate variety, and were very much appreciated by the winners. No wonder the competition was so fierce.
From my point of view, it was very pleasing to see so many children taking part, and so competitive!! I expect to see some more ESOC juniors joining Rachel Brown in ScotJOS over the next few years.
Club President Ewart Scott introduced a new club trophy - the John Colls Trophy, to be awarded annually in John's memory. John was one of the founder members of ESOC and a stalwart of Scottish Orienteering. Nominations had been requested from club members for this trophy but the final decision was with the club committee. The award was to be made to the club member who was considered to have contributed the most to the club over the past year. This year the trophy was to be shared, and so it was presented to Ben Brown, for his sterling work with computing at club events and being a valuable member of the 'Entry on the Day' Team at the 2015 Scottish 6 Days, and to Margaret Dalgleish, for all her hard work as Day Co-ordinator at last summer's Scottish 6 Days event - Highland 2015. It was thought to be particularly apt that the first award of this trophy was in recognition of work carried out on behalf of ESOC, one of the 2 lead clubs involved in organising the Scottish 6 Days 2015 alongside the 2015 World Orienteering Championships, because John was instrumental in founding the Scottish 6 Days and worked in many different roles right up to the year before his death to ensure its continued success.
Finally Ewart thanked everyone for attending and in particular Alison Cunningham for organising the social. Good fun was had by all.
Some photos from the party are available in the Hair o' the Dog 2016 album in ESOC's Google Album Archive.
Other entries categorised under: Social