Scottish 6 Days - Day 5

[Urban]

Sounds entirely reasonable to me Scott. When doing car park stints in the recent past I estimate single occupancy cars accounted for about 35-40% of the total. Habits will only change with incentives (or punitives).

[Sunlit Forres]

For the first time at a 6 Days I decided to take my bike and cycled to each day. Not for any green reasons, but simply to enjoy riding around amongst such stunning scenery. The memory of the ride along the Loch Etive shoreline to Day 6, with Ben Cruachan reflected in the mirror-flat water, will stay with me for a long time. It was quite fun going past a mile of cars back in to Oban on Day 1 too!

I was on car parking on Day 4, and I thought that most people were pretty accepting of any perceived hassles. The one notable exception was a local builder who insisted asserting his right to head West despite 1,000 cars coming in the opposite direction. After a 10-minute stand-off, blocking all inbound traffic it was time to call the Boys in Blue. That did the trick before the call could be made, but I hope that any of you who were almost mown down by a white pickup truck heading East at a dangerous speed weren't too traumatised. The very few grumpy orienteers that I encountered were pussy cats in comparison to this idiot.

Highly amused by Follyfoot's comments. What a nob.

[blindasabat]

What an excellent 6 days!
Well done to the organisers. The transport systems worked pretty faultlessly in my opinion and the car parkers did a great job. The lift sharing was very useful - thanks to the NATO chap and his son, clad head to toe in dayglow yellow, that gave us a lift. Good to see so many people choosing to cycle to the events too.

[Tatty]

No doubt Follyfoot wanted to park his car up near the Start on Day 6

[follyfoot]

,,,

[Big Jon]

it is just some / a minority of officials with no commonsense.

care to name names, or are you just back-pedalling now?

[graeme]

He can only mean the people who took the decisions: day organiser Colin Eades, Professional Officer Colin Matheson and the strathclyde police..

In future, if you want to drive back direct, you just need to help bring in the controls with the rest of us holidaymaking families. You make new friends that way too

[Gross]

it is just some / a minority of officials with no commonsense.

care to name names, or are you just back-pedalling now?

Back pedal to Deeside 93 Jon.... no pussy footing about then No-one would have dared not follow our direction standing in the middle of the A93 with big sticks

[andypat]

Any word from peteowens by way of either an apology or a Nah Nah I cycled it anyway sort of thing?

[binman]

Struggling really hard not to add to the aprobrium levelled at Follyfoot's posts and get back to the actual orienteering last week. Overall, I think the best six areas for a long time although I found the bog myrtle/tussock combination on large chunks of course 45 on Day 5 too much for me. The W45L course looked really good fun though - control picking through the best bits of the area.

Really enjoyed the 6 days experience this time around. That said day 2 @ Ardnastie resulted in a poor run for me and I'd say the area wasn't up to the standard...just not enough running out of the oakwoods and a map that was difficult to interpret the light green from the white until you where in it.

Can't disagree more - I thought Ardnaskie was by far the best area. A constant challenge of concentration, map interpetation and a mixture of terrain types.

Creag Mhic? A bit like a dumb blonde to me - superficially stunning but little depth. Not enough technicality in/around the control circle and route finding realtively simple.

Thanks to all for a great week but let's make it better next time in Moray! Any suggestions on how to do this on a postcard, please...

[madmike]

The W45L course looked really good fun though - control picking through the best bits of the area.

Can't disagree more - I thought Ardnaskie was by far the best area. A constant challenge of concentration, map interpetation and a mixture of terrain types.

W45L, which was also M45S, was indeed a top course on Day 5 great fun - loved it, best of the week.

Can't believe you thought "Hardnasty" was a better area - you obviously didn't have an early start

[Electrocuted]

I ran W21S which was a similar course to W45L/M45S on Day 5. I really enjoyed it. With 17 controls pretty close together it was more like a middle distance race.

I also think it was the only day I got an advantage by having to run early every day as it wasn't too muddy early on. I had to get back to do the newsletter every day so had to start early and fight through bracken every other day.

[EddieH]

Day 1 gets little mention and there seems some implication that it was an easy day. Winsplits suggests otherwise with 15 hours of total mistakes, third to Tominturk's 17 hours and Arnaskie' 16 hours.

[andy]

Day 1 gets little mention and there seems some implication that it was an easy day. Winsplits suggests otherwise with 15 hours of total mistakes, third to Tominturk's 17 hours and Arnaskie' 16 hours.

I'm surprised by that statistic! I didn't run on those 3 days but thought they would have been the 3 easiest. My 10mins of wandering around confused at Ardnaskie suggested otherwise!

[Becks]

I wonder if a mistake is easier to "spot" in Winsplits if the terrain is relatively easier to move on? Perhaps when the physicality increases and people are generally slower, mistakes aren't as obvious? Ie. if someone walked up every hill, their average pace or whatever Winsplits uses is slow enough that if they make an error on a flatter/downhill bit it doesn't come up?

(Stats is not my strong point, this could well be nonsense!)