March Social 2023Loanhead, Tuesday 21 March
This well-attended social featured orienteering or turfing, with drinks afterwards.
Mark Rowe (ESOC Social Co-ordinator) reports:
“The March social was a 1-hour score orienteering event coinciding with a Turf event amongst the streets and open areas of Loanhead. With headtorches heading in all directions and phones making various random noises, the locals must have wondered what was going on!
Score event planner Helena reported that we were lucky to have the use of a new map for this month’s event, which is a nice area with a mix of old and new housing supplemented with a small landscaped area on the Ramsay Colliery Bing. A MapRun Score event was planned for the evening, which meant that no controls were placed in the terrain, only virtual controls in cyberspace, to save on 'on the day preparation'. There were 18 sign-ups and luckily no complaints of MapRun not registering a control (this lot must have expensive phones).
The weather was kind and, as expected, some fast runners managed to collect all the 24 controls in under the hour, with Lucie timing it to perfection with only 10 seconds to spare. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their run/walk. We then retired to The Mason’s Arms to compare routes, celebrate Hanne Robertson’s birthday with cake, a wee sing-song and have a small prize giving.
Just to point out that age categories were very, very, arbitrary and I went for Veteran being over 60yrs; there may be a few people who were 'done out of' a prize because of this decision - sorry.
Winners:
Male: 1st Ewan Kerr, 2nd Alistair Black, 3rd Mark Rowe
Female: 1st Heidi Ross, 2nd Hanne Robertson, 3rd Lucie Hamplova
Male Junior: 1st Calum Robertson, 2nd Tom Uutela
Female Junior: 1st Maja Robertson (also 2= female)
Veteran Male (> 60yrs): 1st Mike Stewart
Veteran Female (> 60yrs): 1st Karin Lyall, 2nd Janice Nisbet, 3rd Fran Humphrey.
Turf event planner MarkkuESOC placed 54 zones of all different shapes and sizes for the Turf event, ranging from Straiton Pond in the North, along the old train line (aka the Loanhead ferret run), throughout the Loanhead Memorial Park and all over Ramsay Bing. The participants found some new routes through the area and some had tricky experiences trying to get onto the old train line, which really is surprising in how it passes under the centre of the village, yet could go completely unnoticed to those not in the know.
Competition for the win was hotly contested for the first 40 minutes or so with KoveshEzorim, bythesea, Aibo and ESOCWalter all closely matched. However, at this point ESOCWalter managed to hold onto his more remote zones and the resulting points per hour (pph) gains saw him streak away to a fine victory. The full results, routes and zones can be seen on the ESOC FTT#9 event page on the Turf website.
ESOCWalter therefore took home the star prize of a jigsaw mapping out all the Munros (ahem - well he should have done - except he left it on the bar!!). Aibo in second place mysteriously chose an Easter egg over the aforementioned jigsaw and the first junior, ESOCKisaKat, not surprisingly also went down the Easter egg option. She also vowed to share just a tiny bit with her brother who had accompanied her and provided data for her phone via a mobile hotspot all night.
We hope that you all enjoyed the social; it was great to see so many there including some 'new' faces and we look forward to seeing you again next month!”
Details of how a Turf event works are in this document: Participating in a Turf Event