July Social 2012Monday 2 July
What happened at the July Social.
July Social – The Story
It was perhaps ambitious to plan a barbeque for the first Monday of the school holidays in July but amazingly it went ahead – despite the damp, misty conditions! Many thanks to Judy, Keith, Ben, Rachel and Megan for opening their home to us once again and for providing us with a very sociable venue for our July get together.
Andrew Dalgleish had planned a street-O around the Colinton and Dreghorn area with teams of 2 attempting to visit all the control sites on the map within an hour. The first complication was trying to line up a bunch (gaggle? flock? rabble?) of orienteers in speed order and then the fastest runner was teamed with the slowest and so on down the line. One lucky person left in the middle of the line without a partner was teamed up with Andrew – just happened to be me! The next complication was deciding who was going to visit which controls – trying to divide up sensibly between the faster and slower runners so as to allow both to return within the hour. And so off we went into the dreich summer evening. Expecting to follow a line of runners up Redford Road I was astonished to see nobody for about the first 30 minutes, was I on a different map?; but then they all started appearing having chosen to visit the controls in the reverse order.
Most pairings worked well and not many penalty points were rewarded for late return. One team didn’t manage to visit all the controls, one team was at an unfair advantage (speed, home territory and planner) - so Andrew and I were disqualified from winning! And prizes were awarded to many with Ben and Rachel winning the Junior prize – well done!
Keith had stoically gone ahead with the barbeque and lit a wood burner to warm the evening. The drizzle eased off and we enjoyed delicious burgers with lots of trimmings and lovely cakes. A convivial atmosphere to chat and catch up with all the O-news – Claire winning the Sprint at the Masters and Andrew and Tara getting married – wonderful photos!
Many thanks to the Brown family and to Andrew for organising a super evening for us all.
Alison Cunningham
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