TAY Christmas score event 2015Glenalmond College, 6 December
A select group of ESOC members enjoyed the traditional TAY Christmas event, which had better weather than anyone dared hope.
Tayside Orienteers organise a festive mass-start score event each year. The 2015 event was at Glenalmond College, on the River Almond near Methven, west of Perth.
Glenalmond College is an independent boarding and day school, over 150 years old, with some beautiful old buildings (reminiscent of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter books) arranged around a quadrangle, set in a 300-acre parkland campus. The terrain varied from mown grass around the buildings, to steep and muddy wooded slopes near the river, with fields further away, and coniferous woodland on the other side of the road for the Long course.
There was a 45 minute time limit for the Short course and 60 minutes for the Long, with control values ranging from 10 to 40 points. It was possible to gain extra points by meeting with a roving Santa or Fairy, and everyone was given a stick of spaghetti – if you managed to present this unbroken at the finish, you gained an extra 40 points.
The weather was luckily much better than the storms of the previous day, and it was sunny most of the time, though cool. Underfoot conditions were very wet indeed, with lots of mud, and paddling was needed in places.
Most people sported seasonal touches such as santa hats or tinsel, and many competitors stayed on for a 3 course lunch in the splendid surroundings of the college refectory. There was a Hogwarts/Glenalmond-themed quiz during lunch, which was won by a group of ESOC members and friends (with much collaboration).
Almost all the ESOC members competed on the Long course, where there were 45 competitors. Andrew Lindsay was the winner, and others in the top half of the results were Jim Martin (4th), Rona Lindsay (7th; first woman), Mike Stewart (8th), Crawford Lindsay (11th), Sally Lindsay (21st), Jim Clark (22nd) and Fiona Findlay (23rd).
Results and other details are on the event page of the TAY website.
Some photos from the event are available in the TAY Christmas event 2015 album in ESOC's Google Album Archive.
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