SOUL 7, 2025Livingston (Deans & Carmondean), 9 November
Credit: Crawford Lindsay
There was a fair turnout from ESOC, and some great results, at the penultimate event in the 2025 Scottish Orienteering Urban League, which was organised by Interløpers.
Livingston is a great area for urban orienteering, with endless complex terrain - modern housing estates with intricate pathways, underpasses, steps, grassy areas, and courtyards, giving good route choice and demanding full concentration.
Here's a report from Rachael Imrie:
“The 7th event in the 2025 Scottish Orienteering Urban League was a return to Livingston. This time Interløpers used the Deans and Carmondean areas, northwest of the map used for SOUL5 for the Sprint Scotland races in August, with courses planned by Lorna Eades. The map combined an extant area with a new map by Frank Townley. Trekking to the start through temperate but significant drizzle, I found myself wondering if leaning into my ankle injury and taking the day off would have been a better idea but I ended up with a very pleasant run and not too challenging navigation, though slippery leaves and areas of grass and vegetation (Alison may have witnessed me taking a sneaky short-cut and slithering out of some woods!) meant I wished that I had brought my trail shoes!
The map provided interesting variety of urban navigation, made a bit more challenging by out-of-bounds areas covering the major road arteries and only crossable at underpasses which could be tricky to see on the map, even at A3. The areas of close-knit housing often had a lot of options for route choice with split second decisions required to shave off a couple of seconds.
25 ESOC members competed with our top result coming from Alison Harding who was 1st on Course 5.”
ESOC results in the top half of their class:
- M Young Junior (3) – Luke Durnall 2nd
- W Open (4) – Heidi Ross 2nd
- W Vet (6) – Hannah Durnall 2nd, Rachael Imrie 3rd
- W Supervet (12) – Helena Nolan 3rd
- M Ultravet (9) – Kevin Harding 1st, Martin Caldwell 2nd, Crawford Lindsay 3rd
- W Ultravet (10) – Alison Harding 1st, Sally Lindsay 4th, Margaret Dalgleish 5th
- M Hypervet (10) – Ian Pyrah 2nd, Les Dalgleish 3rd
- W Hypervet (7) – Fiona Findlay 4th
Full results including Routegadget are available on the Livingston SOUL 7 results page of the INT website.
Further details about the 2025 Scottish Orienteering Urban League, including a list of this year's events and a link to the latest league tables, are on the SOUL page of the Scottish Orienteering Association website.
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