Scottish Score Champs 2026Culbin, Saturday 24th October
A great set of results from the small contingent of ESOCers who travelled to Forres, with almost everyone coming in 1st or 2nd in their age class. Congratulations to Hannah (W40), Sally (W70) and Les (M75) who all became Scottish Score Champions.
Sally Lindsay reports:
This year’s Scottish Score Championships took place in the eastern part of Culbin Forest, on the Moray coast north of Forres. This area was last used for SOL 1 in 2025, and the parking field was the same, near Binsness on the west side of Findhorn Bay. Stormy weather was forecast, and there was a possibility that the event might have to be cancelled. (SOUL 6, in Keith the following day, was postponed until 14 November.) As a precaution, the starts were brought forward, but luckily the rain held off until after everyone had finished. In the forest, it was quite sheltered, and the full force of the wind was only apparent near the finish, on the shore.
The terrain is open pine forest on sand dunes, offering much intricate contour detail as well as vaguer areas, with some big tracks, and a few paths. There were brashings in many places and some gorse thickets, but it was mostly quite runnable.
The time limits were 70 minutes for M20-35 and W21, 40 minutes for M/W14 and below, and 60 minutes for everyone else. As in 2025, the 60 minute score had several different courses (with different sets of controls), allocated to specific age classes, spreading competitors out to make the most of the fairly short start window. Controls were placed throughout the area, with values 10, 20 or 30 points. Deciding where to go was quite challenging, and Routegadget shows many different solutions to the problem.
ESOC results:
- Course 2B M75(3) - Leslie Dalgleish 1st, Ewart Scott 2nd
- Course 2B W70(6) - Sally Lindsay 1st, Margaret Dalgleish 2nd, Rhona Fraser 4th
- Course 2C M80(3) - Ian Pyrah 2nd
- Course 2C W80(3) - Eleanor Pyrah 2nd
- Course 2D M70(5) - Crawford Lindsay 2nd
- Course 2D W40(4) - Hannah Durnall 1st
- Course 3 M10(2) - Luke Durnall 2nd
Full results can be found here and routegadget here.
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