SOL 3, 2025Hartside Hill, 7 September
The third event in the 2025 Scottish Orienteering League was organised by East Lothian Orienteers, on a brand new map.
Hartside Hill is near Soutra, just off the A68 south of Edinburgh. It’s a new area for orienteering, a mature plantation forest on a sloping hillside, with some streams in deep valleys, a network of rides splitting the woodland into blocks, and many ditches.
Alison Harding reports:
“It’s always interesting to run on an area new to orienteering and as there was no previous map we looked at the photos and were pleased to note that there would be no brambles. We had early starts and congratulated ourselves that we would finish before the rain (fingers crossed).
It did take a full 20 minutes uphill to get to the start which was on a wide forest track. Early competitors could be seen choosing either to run straight on the road and into a wide heather-filled ride or turning left just after the start into a stream valley. I saw no one coming back through the start although that appeared to be an option too. On the green course the option turned out to be the left turn into the stream valley, and yes no brambles but tussocks, nettles and bracken! The outer edge of the forest was thick but once through it the ground was clear and pretty runnable apart from dead lower tree branches. Also the planting lanes made it tricky to follow a bearing which was at an angle to them.
The ditches were well mapped but open areas were heather-covered or tussocky making it a physical struggle to get across or along them; going through the trees was probably a better route choice. A few scratches and bleeding but so far no ticks which makes a change. All in all a very enjoyable event.”
ESOC results in the top half of their courses:
- Blue (50 competitors) – Ben Brown 25th
- Short Blue (42) – Kevin Harding 9th, Richard Oxlade 16th
- Green (21) – Alison Harding 4th, Peter Halling 10th, Roger Garnett 7th
- Short Green (21) – Mary Williams 5th
- Light Green (19) – Emma Daley 6th, William Atkinson 9th
- Yellow (14) – Fraser Mackenzie 5th
Full results, including Routegadget and other details about the event, are available on the Hartside Hill SOL page of the ELO website.
Details of all the events in this year’s Scottish Orienteering League are on the SOL page of the Scottish Orienteering Association website.