Scotland's 3 events in a weekend

[EddieH]

What a great weekend of local orienteering we've just had in NE Scotland. Possibly due to the almost continuous steady rain not all that many attended all 3, but a significant number did.

Saturday morning MOR used a new village fooling a few who expected a purely urban event and slipped around on the steep wooded slopes. The High Scool pupils that helped out did a fantastic job, most at their first "real" event ever.

The afternoon saw us in Loch Vaa with BASOC which seemed more runnable than ever - it is many years since forestry workings and last winter seems to have thinned out the heather - 10 k of gorgeous running and technically interesting throughout.

Today INVOC were not outdone at Revack, an extraordinary area in that it has 4 distinctly different types of terrain, most of it very runnable.

For me a weekend like this is definitely a successful format, although I am aware that several family people are restricted and therefore miss out on events that they might have been to had they been a one-off.

[Sunlit Forres]

I missed Loch Vaa and today's event due to work, but what a great job the Speyside Academy pupils did in running the event at Aberlour. The school formed their own O club last summer and held their own school festival in June using the Active School EMIT e-punching kit funded by BOF. It must have been a great experience for them to put on a 'real' event so soon in to the new term, especially with the likes of the mighty Eddie Harwood gracing them with his presence. I think this is a really inovative way of developing orienteering in secondary schools, especially with the new "Curriculum for Excellence" in Scotland where the focus is on how any particular subject can impact in to other areas of the curriculum. Great credit to Pippa Weir for making it all happen.

In orienteering we have a sport where kids can help with course planning (geography), event advertising (media skills), event organisation (management skills), computing (IT skills)... and taking part too (PE). At Aberlour there was even a bit of welcome domestic science with some jolly nice cakes and coffee afterwards.

Not quite the City of London race but a pretty good alternative and congratulations to everyone involved.

[Big Jon]

I wasn't at the Aberlour event, but was at Loch Vaa (not running) and Revack (running). Both events were technically challenging - and the long slopes on Revack particularly physically challenging too! Great to see such quality events happening. The national centre maps we (Maroc) used for training were also great - Uath Lochan and Avielochan have lovely runnable sections with interesting contour detail and provided entertainment and challenge to all who attended from 2 years to a lot more years!