Tulliallan - A New Area?

[LesS]

UKOL3 is advertising Tulliallan as 'A new area for orienteering' - I have noticed people in the past querying places as being new areas but this one must rank near the top of the list - it must be one of the oldest areas ever used!
In the old days i.e. throughout the 60s and early 70s, this must have been one of the most used forests in Scotland. It hosted open events and was used for training us school children at least once a month. We travelled there by service bus or cycled from Dunfermline - 15 miles each way - in the days before school minibuses. As school clubs organised at least half of events in those days, we also planned open events there too.
Originally using the standard two-and-a-half-inch OS maps, it boasted what was one of the first, if not the actual first hand-drawn colour map, copied from the OS map rather than being 'mapped', with the Peffermill Dam in the upper right hand corner. Copies were produced on a duplicator - pre-xerox and photocopying - giving a wonderful pink colour to contours and a lovely turquoise shade for water features and the lines were about three times as thick as they are nowadays - even had the control card as part of the map.
The forest in those days was absolutely filthy due to the outpourings of smoke and ash from Kincardine Power Station - no longer with us, so a much cleaner area!
As Juniors (under 18s) in those days we ran in pairs and the most sensible choice was to run with someone who lived in Kincardine (Dunfermline High School had a large catchment area) - the only reason they needed a map was to know where the next control was - they knew every hollow, hut, tree in the place, so those descriptions with 'A something' i.e. an unmarked feature posed no problems.
The pennant on the wall behind me - Midlands District Orienteering Championships Devilla Junior Men Second Pair 1966 - aged 14 in the under 18s, Geoff Peck was probably in the Winning pair, same school - was mainly in the Tulliallan part. I think Geoff also drew Devilla/Tulliallan as one of the first proper orienteering maps - still black and white. The drift from Tulliallan into the now normally used easterly Devilla part happened in 1971 when one of the Euromeet Events was held there - I still have the hanger displaying my time - a very lengthy time I hasten to add - local junior/intermediate competing with top class foreign seniors wasn't a fair contest in those days, the distance was probably three times as far as I'd ever orienteered before. The only reason I got a place really was I knew the area inside out and it was a midweek race so workers and uni students were busy so couldn't take their selected places - the major event being the following weekend.
Of the 21 people in our 1970 school club photograph (all in uniform of course) who all orienteered there, 3 are still full-time orienteers and 2 others appear occasionally and without really trying, I can think of 10 others still running regularly who will have competed there on numerous occasions.

So not such a new area after all - more given a new lease of life.

[Red Adder]

It sounds as so not used for 40 years would be a more accurate description (my latest map is an area that hasn't been used for 25 years) - and my club's other main mapper is working on a large area which genuinely has never ever been used by the sport ("sporting" tenants etc).

I suppose I could argue that our Rendlesham & Tunstall were entirely new areas when we mapped them after a long hiatus - after all virtually every tree in both were blown down in the '87 storm.

I also saw a prog on the Beeb about black-red squirrels on Formby dunes. The bit they showed looked superb, lots of rolling contour detail and absolutely clean underfoot. Do we ever get access ?

[andy]

For all intents and purposes, it's a new area.

[haloite]

I also saw a prog on the Beeb about black-red squirrels on Formby dunes. The bit they showed looked superb, lots of rolling contour detail and absolutely clean underfoot. Do we ever get access ?

RouteGadget
from September 2010

[graeme]

OK, so it's not a new area, but it is a new forest with never-previously orienteered through trees. Some of which have already fallen down.

[EddieH]

Can anyone tell me how early 'd be allowed to start? I need to get to Telford, but it sounds good if I can get off early enough.

[Red Adder]

To me an area that hasn't been used for at least 10 years is always an incentive to visit. I have enough difficulty remembering my route for Routegadget so there is no way I'll recall somewhere from 10 years ago.

And things can change for the better over time. Our Tunstall map was notorious for having brambles on its brambles - we had to hang controls on the rim of the 20' deep marl pits as to send people down to the bottom put them in great danger of never returning to the surface, ever. Now, apart from one small, uninteresting corner that really requires a machete to get through, there is barely and bramble in sight.

[Lard]

Starts times for Tulliallan - taken from FVO website:

"Start Times: Start times are from 1300-1500 hours."

[pete.owens]

I also saw a prog on the Beeb about black-red squirrels on Formby dunes. The bit they showed looked superb, lots of rolling contour detail and absolutely clean underfoot. Do we ever get access ?

Put 5th October 2014 into your diary.

[Glucosamine]

I have enough difficulty remembering my route for Routegadget so there is no way I'll recall somewhere from 10 years ago.

I used to pride myself on being able to transport myself back in my mind to a leg by looking at an old map. Not sure when I lost that ability, but it certainly does not work any more for the areas where I used to run in central scotland in the early seventies. Presumably 40 years is enough for other areas which suffered clear felling (like Lennox Forest?) to go through another growth cycle.

Extrapolating routechoice forgetfulness seems to have an unnerving convergence with alzheimers ... but perhaps that is a way to make more of smaller areas by running multiple laps for forgetful orienteers?