Highland WOLF 2017Speyside, 23/24 September
Many ESOC members travelled north for this weekend of varied orienteering, including the 9th event in the 2017 Scottish Orienteering Urban League, and the 5th event in the 2017 Scottish Orienteering League.
The Highland WOLF (Weekend of Orienteering in Lovely Forests) was organised by Badenoch and Strathspey Orienteering Club, and featured 3 different length events plus a ceilidh. This year the Highland WOLF also incorporated the Veteran Home International. Heather Thomson (W40), Maggie Scrugham (W55) and Margaret Dalgleish (W65) were in the Scotland team.
The first event, a Middle Distance race, was in the morning on Saturday 23 September, following the VHI relay. This was at Auchernack & Bailliefurth, just south of Grantown-on-Spey. It’s a long narrow area beside the River Spey, with very pleasant terrain - lots of small hills and valleys amongst birch woodland. The Middle Distance race reused the VHI Relay courses. The courses were gaffled (i.e. used various sets of controls) – in the relay, each team would have visited the same controls over the 3 legs, but as the Middle Distance race was just a single leg, competitors ran several slightly different variants on each course. There were 3 mass starts. The arena was in a sheltered bowl, with good views of runners on the spectator loop, and the weather was sunny and warm.
ESOC members in the top half of the results for their course were:
Brown (40 competitors) – Andrew Lindsay 15th
Blue (54) – Laura Robertson 1st, Rona Lindsay 11th
Green (73) – Alison Cunningham 5th, Crawford Lindsay 16th, Les Dalgleish 24th
Short Green (27) – Janice Nisbet 4th, Eleanor Pyrah 13th
Orange (23) – Maja Robertson 7th
White (12) – Zoe Clark 3rd
On Saturday afternoon, there was an urban Sprint event in Aviemore, centred on the Dalfaber Country Club, on the east side of the town between the Strathspey steam railway and the River Spey. This was a new map, with terrain including a modern housing estate, holiday chalets and a golf course, interspersed with pockets of birch woodland and open parkland. The courses looped around the area with some interesting route choice. The weather remained fine, though not as sunny as the morning.
ESOC members in the top half of the results were:
M Open (32 competitors) – Laura Robertson 16th
M Vet (34) – Walter Clark 7th=
M SuperVet (21) – Keith Brown 1st, Crawford Lindsay 11th
M UltraVet (14) – Dave Kershaw 3rd, Les Dalgleish 4th=, Ian Pyrah 6th, Roger Scrutton 7th
W Open (22) – Gill Martin 10th
W Vet (37) – Alison Cunningham 3rd, Judy Bell 15th, Hanne Robertson 19th
W SuperVet (17) – Sally Lindsay 9th
W UltraVet (13) – Eleanor Pyrah 4th, Fiona Findlay 7th
W Young Junior (23) – Maja Robertson 1st, Megan Brown 12th
M Young Junior (18) – Joseph Lawlor 6th
This was the 9th event in the 2017 Scottish Orienteering Urban League. For a list of all this year’s Scottish Orienteering Urban League events, and a link to the league tables (click on “BTO SOUL Series Results”), see the SOUL page of the Scottish Orienteering Association website.
A handful of ESOC members went to the very busy ceilidh on Saturday evening, at Lagganlia Outdoor Centre.
SOL 5 took place on Sunday at Inshriach, in conjunction with the VHI Individual race. The event centre was at Lagganlia Outdoor Centre, and the starts were in the forest to the north. The terrain was mostly very rough, especially in open areas that had been recently felled, and there were some very long times. Longer courses ventured into the intricate hummocky moraine in the south of the area, and many people had two crossings of a rather deep river.
The weather was unfortunately windy and wet, a complete contrast to the previous day.
ESOC members in the top half of the results for their course were:
Brown (44 competitors) – Laura Robertson 10th
Short Brown (49) – Jim Martin 23rd
Blue (75) – Keith Brown 36th
Short Blue (77) – Alison Cunningham 17th, Peter Halling 24th, Les Dalgleish 29th
Green (88) – Peter O’Hara 10th, Maggie Scrugham 26th, Sally Lindsay 32nd, Janice Nisbet 36th, Alastair Lessells 41st, Kerry Wood 44th
Short Green (40) – Margaret Dalgleish 5th, Eleanor Pyrah 18th
Very Short Green (14) – Brian Yates 7th
Orange (40) – Joseph Lawlor 10th, Maja Robertson 16th
White (14) – Zoe Clark 5th
Details of all the events in this year’s Scottish Orienteering League, and the league tables, are on the SOL page of the Scottish Orienteering Association website.
Full results, including Routegadget, for the above events are available in the BASOC results archive.
England won the VHI. For a full report, see this news item on the Scottish Orienteering Association website.
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