Scottish Night Championships weekend 2023Balmoral/Balmedie, 25/26 February
MAROC organised this year’s Scottish Night Championships, at Balmoral on Royal Deeside, and GRAMP presented a contrasting event in the dunes of Balmedie the next day. There were good ESOC results at both events.
Mar Orienteering Club organised a Sprint event in Ballater on Saturday afternoon, to provide some entertainment before the main event that evening, and a few ESOC members competed. The start and finish were just to the east of Station Square, and courses zigzagged through housing estates and up onto the lower slopes on Craigendarroch hill.
Results, Routegadget, and more details about this event are on the Ballater Sprint event page of the MAROC website.
The Scottish Night Championships was at Balmoral, with the event centre at Easter Balmoral Hall, and the start a short walk to the NW. This technical area was used for the 2018 British Championships. It’s hilly, so most courses had a lot of ascent, and the terrain was quite rough, with lots of rocky ground and crags, as well as deep heather in places. There’s a network of paths and tracks to aid navigation a little. The weather was cold, with a few light snow flurries early on, but otherwise dry.
There were 3 Scottish champions from ESOC:
Rachel Brown (running as EUOC) – W20
Sally Lindsay – WUV
Eleanor Pyrah – WHV
Other ESOC results:
W16 (6 competitors) – Megan Brown 6th
MSV (13) – Keith Brown 10th
MUV (11) – Crawford Lindsay 5th
WUV (3) – Margaret Dalgleish 2nd
Novice (7) – Rhona Fraser 3rd
Full results and more details about the event are available on the Scottish Night Championships event page of the MAROC website.
The ESOC contingent (plus a couple more) also competed at Grampian Orienteers’ Regional event the next day. This was at Balmedie, on the coast north of Aberdeen. It’s a long thin area, and the terrain is very complex sand dunes, with flatter ground on the landward side. In the dunes there is some loose sand, but mostly marram grass with patches of scrub, and there were some confusing unmapped temporary lochans in the open areas. The whole area is criss-crossed by paths, both large and small, and it was very easy to lose track. Courses zig-zagged the full length of the dunes. The weather was dull and cool, but stayed dry.
ESOC results:
Blue (34 competitors) – Rachel Brown (running as EUOC) 2nd, Keith Brown 23rd, Crawford Lindsay 28th
Green (40) – Megan Brown 6th, Finlay Ross 20th, Les Dalgleish 22nd, Sally Lindsay 24th
Short Green (15) – Margaret Dalgleish 2nd, Judy Bell 5th, Rhona Fraser 8th, Eleanor Pyrah 10th, Anne Hickling 12th
Full results, plus Routegadget and other details about the event, are on the Balmedie Results page of the GRAMP website.
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