September Social 2026Tuesday 22nd September, King's Buildings
For the orienteers, Heidi organised telephone-O. Telephone-O is where one person is at a central base directing their partner over the phone on where to go to find the control. Concurrently a Turf event took place catering for those on foot or bike. Both events enjoying a warm still evening as we transitioned into Autumn.
There was a mix of star exercises, small loops and larger loops for orienteers to try. King's Builiding as an area provided a good challenge as there are lots of paths and features to use to direct your partner. An added twist to the evening was that there were three spot prize controls marked by a picture of a pineapple. The first person to any of these controls, who then returned the picture to the base would win a mystery prize. The youngest orienteers there on the evening were delighted to have won a spot prize and had great fun trying to guess what the mystery prize was. To their disappointment the picture of the pineapple was a simply a pictorial of the prize with our three spot prize winners winning pineapples!
Well done to our spot prize winners: Ted and Ben Clatworthy, David and Hanne Robertson, Helena Nolan and Walter Clark
Over to the Turf event where 56 zones were placed by first time planner JammyDognut covering the King's Buildings area and local streets to the North and East. From the off it was noticeable that the area of Kings Buildings itself was remarkably busy with nearly all zones at any one time being blocked through having been recently taken. On the streets it was quieter, however that was where the slopes started to kick in!
The early pace was set by RapidFire in just his second event and Christmas2. From the halfway point Christmas2 stretched her points lead, having the luxury at one point of holding over 10 zones and thus benefitting from a points per hour boost compared to her competitors, and ultimately taking a considerable victory. She took a whopping 47 zones in the 60 minutes. MarkkuEsoc came through into second late on and RapidFire took third, all 3 being on foot interestingly and beating some of the more fancied cyclists. Perhaps it was that the cyclists, amongst them many of the heavy hitters in the September Turf region fight had already given their all.
Prizes of chocolate were duly given out back at the start/finish of the orienteering event to the first 3. The promised social in the nearby Students Union failed to materialise as it was temporarily closed. Rumours circulated that the Freshers Week had perhaps wiped out all the beer stocks!!
Turf event results can be seen here.
Thank you to Heidi and JammyDognut for their planning efforts contributing to another enjoyable social.