SoSOL 5, 2025Binning Wood, 28 June
The fifth event in the 2025 South of Scotland Orienteering League was organised by East Lothian Orienteers.
Binning Wood lies between North Berwick and Dunbar in East Lothian, and is familiar to many from previous events. It’s a mature forest of conifers and beech, much of it very pleasant, though often rough, with some very thick rhododendron thickets and also areas of brambles. The terrain is mostly flat, with a network of paths and rides radiating out from three large circular clearings (making it very easy to choose the wrong path!)
Roger Scrutton comments:
“We were forewarned: ‘the carpet of brashings can make for slow progress’ and ‘some patches of rhododendrons are effectively impassable’ and ‘Binning Wood itself is very lush at this time of year so be prepared for dense undergrowth’. Accessing some of the control sites was akin to hacking your way through a tropical rain forest.
On the other hand, Binning Wood has a great path network, very suitable for White to Orange, and, yesterday, very popular. For other courses the strategy had to be run round paths to an attack point and then fight your way in and out. Finish times were quite long and there were several retirals.
It was a lovely, sunny, early Summer’s day. Summer poses a bit of a problem for ELO, which has some very good coastal areas for orienteering, but these are out of bounds at this time of year due to the presence of ground-nesting birds. Hence reverting to Binning Wood, which would be quite a bit better as a Spring or late Autumn venue.
Many thanks to Planner, Ian Rowland, and Controller, John Tullie, for whom planning the longer courses must have been very difficult.”
ESOC results in the top half for their course were:
- Blue (24 competitors) – Luigi Lerose 3rd, Keith Brown 12th
- Green (26) – Alison Harding 7th, Margaret Dalgleish 13th
Full results, along with the Planner’s report and links to Routegadget and other analysis, are on the Binning Wood SoSOL page on the ELO website.
Further details about the South of Scotland Orienteering League, including the league tables, are on the SoSOL page of the East of Scotland Orienteering Association website.
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