South Achray SoSOL 2026Sunday 26th April
Credit: Rachael Imrie
Aberfoyle saw a decent turn out from ESOC, resulting in 2nd place for Emma on Short Green and 3rd for Ossian on White. Another 7 members were in the top 10 of their class. Overall, Margaret & Sally are lying 2nd & 4th on Short Green, Alison is 6th on Green, Keith & Megan are 6th & 7th on Blue.
South Achray is part of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park in the Troassachs. The open forest includes many streams and marshes, and also an impressive waterfall. This river was crossed on many of the courses, but only at the bridges. However, some of the wetter ditches were crossed as required on Green, Blue and Brown!
Rachel Imrie writes:
Spring had finally sprung for a beautiful day in Aberfoyle. Set in the forest above the town, the event at South Achray was the fourth in the South of Scotland Orienteering League. FVO immediately won some bonus points from Corran for presenting him with his very own shadowing map to keep tabs on his brother. We all welcomed the short uphill walk to the starts! Ossian enjoyed a pleasant trot around the white course, trailed by Daddy and Corran, with enough time to meet the animals at the wool centre whilst waiting for me. The blue course was an excellent combination of terrains: forest, marshes (thigh high, I tested) and quality contour details but with a good smattering of linear features to keep me right. My only complaint was that there were a few areas of my least favourite running environment: moss and low lying plants looking solid but covering boulders lurking in wait for ankle maiming (fortunately avoided)! 26 controls in just over 5km meant that there were no particularly long legs and it was a boost for my confidence to find all the controls with relative ease though I would perhaps rethink my approach to 16 where I had to put into play some of the Parkour skills I recently learnt with the Beavers. I have never previously managed to upload my GPS to Routegadget without trepidation that people would judge my questionable route choices, so this was a real treat! All in all, a very well organised and challenging event from FVO and an area that I would definitely like to run again in the future.
Sally Lindsay also remarked that there were plenty of controls (15) on her Short Green course, making an enjoyable outing in the forest.
ESOC results in the top half:
- Blue (27) - Will Mair 8th, Keith Brown 11th, Kevin Harding 13th
- Green (21) - Alison Harding 6th, Finlay Ross 7th
- Short Green (29) - Emma Daley 2nd, Sally Lindsay 4th, Margaret Dalgleish 6th, Leslie Dalgleish 11th, Judy Bell 14th
- Light Green (8) - Maria O'Hara 5th
- Orange (19) - Eddie Mair 4th
- White (4) - Ossian Imrie 3rd
Full results can be found here along with Winsplits and Routegadget. Whilst SoSOL points are here and the overall SoSOL league here.
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