Moray 2013 - Unveiling of the Event Centre & Camp Site

[Sunlit Forres]

Moravian have teamed up with Brodie Castle to stage an event on 3rd November that will also be the unveiling of the Moray 2013 Event Centre and Camp Site.

You can run on a new map, courses planned by Scotjos W14 Kathryn Barr, have a spot of lunch in the Castle tea room and then have a guided tour of this historic property, hosted by some of Moravian's teenage members who are being trained as guides for the day during the October holidays. I'm also doing a presentation on an embryonic schools project where we want to equip all 8 of Moray's secondary schools with e-punching to allow them to run their own events etc. All the info about this, and the event itself, is on http://www.moravianorienteering.org

The castle is open to orienteers only, and the castle staff would like people to register for the event via Oentries in good time so they know how many staff they need on duty, and how much provisioning they need to do for the tea room. Moravian would quite like to know how many maps to order as well!

It's not something I'd recommend travelling the length of the country for, but if you're not too far from the area we can promise a great family day out. The grounds always look fantastic at this time of year and I'm told the courses will be entertaining. There's also the North District Cross Country League event at Inverness in the afternoon with the first junior race starting at 1.15pm, seniors at 2.30.

[andypat]

On a separate note, in May we booked in at the Nairn Lochloy Parkdean caravan park for Moray 2013 but got a phone call yesterday advising us that the caravan we'd booked wouldnt be there for 2013 as they were too shabby and being replaced (not so shabby they couldnt charge us £700 for a week all the same). Their solution to this was to offer us the opportunity to pay £100 more for an upgraded caravan.

After due consideration we turned down their offer (interestingly the caller didnt seem to know how to deal with this), not least because almost the very same thing happened to us at the JK at Pitlochry this Easter - mysteriously our caravan was no longer available - that time we took what was available as it was only a weekend. Now of course I'm not suggesting anything underhand is going on, more likely they have just taken a lead from Ryanair wrt customer service. But I thought it worth a mention anyway. We're now looking for a cottage or hoping for good camping weather...

[Freefall]

Go for Brodie - it is really excellent. We hope to have the booking system up and running shortly (before Moray 2013 entries).

[Sunlit Forres]

You can say that again Colin. I'm up there tomorrow with the first two of our trainee tour guides. Campers are in for a treat. Beer tent, open-air theatre, music, food and no doubt whatever else they're dreaming up. It's walking distance to Culbin for Day 3, and less than 5 mins walk to the bus stop for Inverness/Forres/Elgin. For families with young kids they even have a fantastic playpark that was built last year with £80,000 from the Budge Trust.

I live only 2 miles way but quite fancy camping there myself.

[andypat]

NIcely advertised guys - dont you ever take a day off?!

[Roomungous]

There is a static caravan park within 5 mins walk of Brodie Castle, with an excellent pub (The Old Mill). Other Static Caravan Parks in Findhorn, Burghead, Hopeman and 2 in Lossiemouth are very comparable to Lochloy.

[plain lazy]

For families with young kids they even have a fantastic playpark that was built last year with £80,000 from the Budge Trust.

Does that mean that they have removed the old wooden fort that used to be there? I remember that when I was a kid!

[Sunlit Forres]

'Fraid so, but what's there now is better.

Andypat - I've had a quiet word with the chap from Nairn tourism and a local councillor. Watch this space.

[andypat]

Andypat - I've had a quiet word with the chap from Nairn tourism and a local councillor. Watch this space.

Probably should clarify our gripe was with Parkdean centrally, not the Nairn site, which I know is lovely down there on the beach.

Incidentally Parkdean came back to me later on yesterday to say we could have the upgraded caravan for the same price but we'd kind of lost faith in them by then and my wife has already found a nice wee cottage in Buckie for the week.

(I did suggest the camping, but got the distinct impression that I'd only need a 1 man tent for that!)