Scottish Individual Champs 2026, Grandtully, BallinluigSaturday 23rd May
Credit: Catriona Gillespie
An excellent day for ESOC at the Scottish Individual championship as 13 members, including 3 juniors, made it onto the podium, with Kirsten and Eleanor both receiving gold medals in their respective age classes.
The 2026 edition of the Scottish Individual championship was held near Grandtully, hosted by STAG orienteering. The area had contrasting terrain types with open runnable, if boggy, birch forest and then plantation forest in the south, which was visited by the longer courses. This section included extraction lanes and rides. Some courses also crossed a steep sided valley with a wide stream, which on the day was possible to cross with dry feet, however much of the mapped marsh put paid to returning with dry/clean shoes! Most courses included a lot of climb, despite the overall downhill, and were consequently slightly shorter.
Jules Mair writes:
Glorious sunshine. Runners limbering up with swinging legs and high knees, others lumbering up oiling joints. The initial 45 degree (or maybe 60) incline from the parking field to team camp providing a rigorous health screen for entrants. All trotting off to the starting grids; across the open rough field for the younger Junior start and into the forest for the rest. More acclimatized to the gentle parkland of local races, the Mair relative newbies enjoyed the hunt for controls in seemingly indistinct patches of runnable forest and those tucked behind moss covered boulders lying as one with the forest floor. Course record clinched for 38 minutes for one control! The terrain was criss crossed with ditches both dry and moist. The groundwater seemed spread most evenly over the majority of the forest floor. Bog, bog, bog, lost shoe, bog, bog, bog, bog, other shoe off …reported Eddie, fortunately managing to reclaim all footwear to leap onto a podium place. Junior Kirsten, famed for advertising our fine club buffs, managed to do so from the top of the podium - well done Kirsten! Other podium places were pulled off by……running fine races through extremely enjoyable courses.
ESOC results in the top half:
- M10A (4) - Luke Durnall 3rd
- M12A (4) - Eddie Mair 3rd
- M21L (4) - Ben Brown 2nd
- M65L (18) - Kevin Harding 9th
- M75L (11) - Peter Halling 2nd, Les Dalgleish 6th
- M80L (3) - Ian Pyrah 3rd
- W10A (4) - Kirsten Tinsley 1st
- W14A (9) - Emma Daley 2nd
- W40L (7) - Hannah Durnall 3rd, Sarah McAdam 4th
- W45S (6) - Catriona Gillespie 3rd
- W50L (11) - Fran Daley 2nd
- W55L (17) - Emma Anderson 7th
- W55S (6) - Judy Bell 2nd
- W60L (14) - Helena Nolan 4th
- W65L (8) - Alison Harding 2nd
- W70L (6) - Sally Lindsay 2nd, Margaret Dalgleish 3rd
- W80L (4) - Eleanor Pyrah 1st
Full results and routegadget can be found here.
This event was also the 11th in the 2026 UK Orienteering League (UKOL). In the individual competition Janice Nisbet is in 16th place, Helena Nolan is 51st, with Megan Brown and Fran Williams in joint 75th. In the club competition ESOC has moved up to 8th position. The score is calculated automatically from the 15 best club members' scores across various age classes. The updated league tables are on the UKOL page of the British Orienteering website.
Other entries categorised under: Event Reports - Juniors