ESOC local event in Edinburgh and the Lothians
Sat 16th Jun 2018
Type of event: Local
Near: Edinburgh
Results are here
Winsplits are here
ORGANISER’S COMMENTS: Bonaly always works for us, even in the most unpromising of conditions. Today we had Junior Training first, followed by a wide variety of people not put off by the forecast or the reality of intermittent heavy rain. It was good to see a number of "First-timers" from the local area and some hill-runners for the innovative Long Light Green course. The "Alpaca Walk" coming up through the route to the Start/Finish gave us all a bit of excitement. Registration was a bit difficult in the rain, but ESOC teamwork made it all happen.
Thanks to everyone who came and everyone who worked hard.
Janet Clark Organiser 0131 225 7771
PLANNER’S COMMENTS: I had a lot of fun planning this event, doing my Wednesday run with a couple of my friends and discussing the map and then going out with Craig to discuss the control sites and courses.
The Orange was probably the most difficult and least successful course as to get the required distance there was a lot of climb but I was told by Craig that the western part of the map was too tricky for an Orange so I couldn't use this slightly flatter area.
I was pleased at the uptake of the Long Light Green and Green courses which made it worth the effort of putting out the distant controls.
Thanks to Jonathon Marks and Mark Johnston for pointing out the error on the Long Light Green, and to Jonathon for rectifying it before anyone else was affected. A big thanks to Janet once again for her excellent organisation, and to all the ESOC helpers who helped make the event a success even in all the rain.
Helena Nolan
Brilliant area for orienteering at all skill levels.
Updated: 17th Jun 2018 Read more…
World Orienteering Day maze event during the day followed by Sprintelope urban event in the evening
Wed 23rd May 2018
Type of event: Local, Sprint
Near: Edinburgh
The results are here
ORGANISER’S COMMENTS: I expect participants in World Orienteering Day (WOD) experienced a wide range of climatic conditions throughout the world. Here in Edinburgh it was a bit on the cold side, though lovely and sunny in the afternoon. Good for running, though.
The WOD activities during the day were fantastic. ESOC provided the Maze, masterminded by Judy Bell and Ben Brown and enjoyed by eight Primary school classes and a number of passers-by of all ages, some delighted to rediscover orienteering from their youth. The INTerlopers club provided a range of activities related to orienteering, resulting in lots of happy children racing about the Meadows with intense concentration.
The Sprintelope in the evening moved across to Bruntsfield Links to avoid the embargoed area of the Meadows. The Yellow course for Juniors around the Links was enthusiastically received by, among others, a large group of local Scouts. The urban courses visited areas new to many and enjoyable to all, with the sprint finish apparently especially competitive.
Thank you to everyone who came and helped us to contribute to the world-wide event which is WOD.
A thumb compass was left behind on the Registration table. Contact me if it is yours.
Janet Clark .
World Orienteering Day maze and other orienteering related activities from 11am to 4pm aimed at newcomers followed in the early evening by Sprintelope urban event for more experienced club orienteers.
Updated: 24th May 2018 Read more…
Informal local 'Sprintelope' event
Wed 09th May 2018
Type of event: Local, Sprint
Near: Penicuik
Results in simple pdf format. On the Long course Brian Miller is shown as dsq but he retired. Janice didn't punch the start but retired due to injury.
ORGANISER’S COMMENTS:
The Bush is a delightful place on a warm spring evening. We were unlucky not to get one of these tonight, but nevertheless, about a hundred people came to enjoy Jon Ellis's Long and Short courses, and everyone soon warmed up by running. The intricate buildings were a bit curtailed by recent fencing around some of them, but the area still provides an interesting mixture of terrain. We were delighted to have a big party of Girl Guides at the event, along with seasoned "Sprintelopers" and members of other clubs; all are very welcome. Thank you to Jon Ellis for planning, to the small but hardworking ESOC team of helpers, and to Bush Estate for welcoming us once more to use their lovely parkland for our event. We will be back here in September for the ESOC Ultrasprint (the event with the Maze).
Janet Clark
This event is very informal with only one short and one long course. Both very straightforward and suitable for most people who have done some orienteering before.
Updated: 11th May 2018 Read more…
ESOC local event in Edinburgh and the Lothians with an extra course, Long Green, 10k
Sat 14th Apr 2018
Type of event: Local
Near: Penicuik
Results are here
Winsplits are here
ORGANISER’S COMMENTS: Janet Clark writes: The day of this event was an unbelievably lovely surprise, truly the first day of spring! The prospects hadn't looked good during the week before, with sleet and low cloud making it very hard to check and tape control sites. But all that was forgotten as the sun shone, the fields and hill rapidly filled up with new-born lambs (100 were born that day) and everyone from experienced hill runners to beginner families enjoyed their runs. The addition of a 10km course was popular; and we'll do this again on the Pentlands.
We're very grateful to the shepherd who tolerates us at this time of year, and, as ever, to the small but hard-working team of ESOC members who made the event possible.
A super area for orienteering at all skill levels. At this event we will have the usual courses (including a Green course) plus a 10k Long Green course. Something for absolutely everyone.
Updated: 15th May 2018 Read more…
Scottish Orienteering League event
Sun 08th Apr 2018
Type of event: National
Near: Pitlochry
String results are here
Results are here
Winsplits are here
Routegadget is here
LOST PROPERTY: a pair of icebug shoes in a JOK Chasing Sprint shoe bag and Star Wars themed Buff left on one of the buses. The buff has yet to make its way back to Edinburgh but will be back later this week. Contact Roger Scrutton by email to: if either of these items belong to you or anyone in your family to arrange return.
ORGANISER'S COMMENTS: Roger Scrutton writes: Despite the organisation of the event being approximately Plan E, on the day everything worked out well, including some beautiful spring weather, and I should like to thank all helpers and competitors for contributing.
Actually, the Assembly field is a beautiful field for an Assembly - great views, great run-in, space for tents, very nice venue for the String course etc, etc. A few people had said they recollected the field being used for parking at previous Linn of Tummel events. It's certainly in the best position along the Foss road for planning junior courses. However, it is very lumpy, having at one time accommodated a shieling and therefore strewn with rocks just under the topsoil and grass. With a bit of rain, this makes the surface quite difficult for driving. The event was therefore a bit of a trial run for using the field for parking in the future, the hard-standing at Clunie Power Station no longer being available. For cars it would probably work, but for camper vans and motor homes I'm not so sure. A long period of dry weather before the event would help.
PLANNER'S COMMENTS: Jim Martin writes: Thanks to everyone who attended and helped out at Linn of Tummel on Sunday. In particular thanks to John (controller) and Roger (organiser) who made the day a great success. I planned the courses from white up to black and had great fun doing it.
CONTROLLER'S COMMENTS: John Emeleus (KFO) writes:
Congratulations to ESOC for staging this event. The club has an impressively large membership from which to draw support for this type of competition. Roger, as organiser, had his work cut out in trying to solve the problem of arranging parking away from the area and then getting people to it along some rather minor roads, with many possibilities investigated. From all accounts I received, his transport plan from Pitlochry worked very well. Thankfully the weather on the day was excellent but I would like to think that we could have gone ahead with snow on the ground and even with the access road impassable in its final stages. As it was, the weekend of the event was the first of my 4 visits when the area was snow free and I was pleased just to spot a slither of something hard-packed and slippery on the roadside as I drove up the hill to the assembly field on Saturday morning.
Jim worked very hard to produce the courses and was assiduous in responding to my comments and questions. He gave people on the higher technical difficulty courses experience of some quite different types of terrain, and once the initial climb had been achieved much of the ground was relatively runnable. No doubt post-event discussions will have been had about the pros and cons of using a high start for courses that didn’t need to be based on line features. I had noted that of the 4 maps I have from previous events at Linn of Tummel only one showed a high start and I was happy enough to follow the decision to start all courses near the road.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the routegadget analysis of the courses. It is always very instructive to get this picture of what happened out there. Jim and I heard that some people’s navigation fell apart once across the road and this seems to have happened to an extent. Competitors would certainly have been tired by this stage. It is interesting and pleasing to see a variety of routes taken on some of the long and short legs
I note from social media a comment about the lack of long legs on the shorter TD5 courses, specifically Blue. I apologise to anyone who felt that the middle distance style of navigation represented too great a portion of their course. I thought Jim came up with some good, longer legs, but it now seems obvious that some courses got a different balance from others, which is something I overlooked and take responsibility for not dealing with.
There were also some other things I let slip through, notably that wet pit (211) on the open hill above the start. I have previous bad form with pits but thought I’d made improvements in my approach. I considered the site a fair challenge, with surrounding features, including the adjacent marsh, and even a slightly higher border to the pit, presumably the earth from when it was dug out. The planner had placed the control marker fairly, with the top visible when nearby, but as I discovered on Sunday evening, when I visited to collect the control, it had been pressed down through use. I then leant on it and saw it sink in another foot. The older style T-bars used in Scotland since the mid-90s have a short length of metal butting outwards from the shaft, designed to stop this sinking into soft ground, not as I thought for a long time to help the planner get the thing into the ground in the first place! I have taken note.
Someone told me that 204, the shallow re-entrant in the SE part of the area, was much closer than mapped to the stream junction below. My control collection route also took me there and I can confirm this is the case, with the site only 25-30m from the junction, not 45-50m as mapped. Apologies to people who felt they were on location and could not see the control, since you had to be standing in the actual single contour re-entrant to see the control flag.
No-one told me about problems with the map at 238, in the woods a few 100m west of the finish, and unfortunately I did not realise until the day before the event that the “middle crag” with the control on was actually not in line with the other two, as the map suggests, but 5-10m further north, and also not closer to upper crag. I assume most people were just happy to find a control flag by this stage, however if you thought things a little odd in that location there is the reason.
Finally, an explanation regarding the rather easy control (242) near the stream junctions, on longer courses shortly before the road crossing. This acted as a safety feature rather than a navigational challenge, to give you a fair chance of crossing the streams during or after any heavy rain, rather than leaving you apparently stuck the wrong side of a single, raging torrent below the control site.
I would like to thank ESOC for the opportunity to control here and I hope that the area will see plenty more events on it.
A fine orienteering area comprising mostly open hillside with heather, bracken, crags, rock features and scattered birch trees with some larger areas of woodland.
FINAL DETAILS now available. Start times are on Fabian4
Details of maps available for entry on the day (EOD) are below
Updated: 10th Apr 2018 Read more…
ESOC local event in Edinburgh and the Lothians
Sat 17th Mar 2018
Type of event: Local
Near: Edinburgh
Results are here
Winsplits are here
LOST PROPERTY: A pair of blue/white ski gloves (possibly child size) were found on the sofa in Reception. We aren't sure if they belong to an orienteer or one of the many others who were using the facilities today so they have been left at the Mary Erskine Sports Centre reception and can be collected from there.
ORGANISER'S COMMENTS: The freezing cold was the main thing to contend with for all helpers today. Very grateful indeed to all who put up with this to make the event happen. People soon get warm running about, but not sitting at a table filling in forms! We're very grateful to the staff at the Sports Centre too, who allowed us to partly move inside.
PLANNER'S COMMENTS: Thanks to everyone who came to enjoy the courses today despite the "Mini Beast from the East" making an appearance and giving us some very cold weather. I hope you have all warmed up now!
Mary Erskine is a great little area with a range of terrain, and I aimed to make the longer courses as challenging as possible by keeping the legs short. This did make the courses fairly dense in terms of controls near each other and legs crossing over, which probably made it a bit trickier sometimes to work out where you were actually supposed to go next! The west part of the wood is particularly good and all of the longer courses got into that section. The longer courses also all had the control in the middle of the tunnel, and I know not everyone loved crawling through that but thought it would be something a bit different for you!
After doing the armchair planning, I moved various controls to avoid some of the muddier and steeper parts of the wood and also some controls moved because of the difficulty of sticking them into the ground or attaching them to something. There was construction work over in the south-east which was mapped as at last weekend with the out of bounds shading etc. but had all changed again by the time we were there today, so sorry about that but I'm sure you call coped no problem.
Since the green criss-crossed such a lot, I put the light green together as another option, and this simply used controls from other courses so was an easy thing to add as another option. Not many people ran that course as it turned out!
It was brilliant to see so many recently joined ESOC members at the event, and thank you to everyone who helped with all of the different jobs.
Best for beginners and improvers and experienced orienteers looking for training
Updated: 17th Mar 2018 Read more…
