The results from this morning’s event at Bowhill are HERE

Routegadget (where you can add your own route) is HERE

When I got word during the week of the approaching storm I did start to wonder what else might happen. Away back whenever, I agreed to plan an event at Elibank but couldn’t do it on the proposed date. I started planning in the hope that the date could be changed. When it couldn’t, I had to begin again. Initially I had thought to try and take the courses to parts of Bowhill that hadn’t been used for some time. After 2 visits, I gave up on this as it would have needed too many map corrections. As I was running out of time, I planned courses using sites that had been used in the past and parts of the forest that I had visited. There were, however, a couple of parts that I hadn’t checked, and I apologise if these caused any problems.

It is also getting quite tricky to plan a Light Green course which doesn’t present W12, Ellie with too much of a challenge while still giving the “more experienced” orienteers some level of challenge. From the results, it looks like Ellie was doing fine up to control 9 when she realised she needed to get back, to accompany her friend Ava round the yellow course. Some of the more experienced orienteers seem to have found controls 9 & 10 quite challenging!

Well done to everyone on the Orange and Yellow courses. Everyone managed to come first on at least one leg of their course. I apologise again for leg 7 – 8 on the Orange course. It looks relatively straightforward on the map, but I didn’t check it!

A very big thank you to Bowhill House and Grounds and especially to Michael Paton, their Learning and Engagement Ranger. He brought the weather warning to my attention and was very supportive when I suggested moving the event to an earlier start time. I’m listening to the wind and rain battering my house now and am glad that we got everyone safely away before the weather deteriorated. A second big thank you to Lindsey whose role as “buddy” started off with reminders to put the course closing time on the maps but ended with a massive effort to put out controls on Friday afternoon and very early on Saturday morning (and then manage registration) so that we could beat the weather. Thank you to those who brought in controls: Rob, Eb, Andrew and James and to everyone who came along and took part in the event, making all the effort to organise it worthwhile.

Pauline (Planner/Organiser)

Thanks to everyone who came along today for the Club Championships and Open Orange course. The Championship results in winning order are below, and the splits are at this link:

The results from today’s event at Bowmont are HERE

Thank you to all those who came along to Bowmont today. It was a lovely day to be out and I certainly enjoyed my trip around the forest placing the controls, beginning not long after sunrise. Judging from the comments at the finish I think all enjoyed their runs around the muddy grid of paths. It was great to see a few new faces and also newcomers returning for a second outing.

I also enjoyed comparing the variations in routes on the Score. The 30 minute time limit meant there wasn’t much time for dithering and I planned the Score so that it would be difficult to get around all of the controls within the time allowed. Well done to John for being the most efficient in hoovering up the highest score within the time allowance. James actually collected the most points but his ambitions were greater than his time keeping…..

As ever, organising the event was a Reivers team effort. Thanks again to Lindsey for setting up and running registration / download and to Pauline, Robin, John, Keith, Eb and James for collecting in controls and dismantling the start /finish. And all just in time to get to the Club Christmas Lunch which was excellent.

Robert

p.s. thanks too to Robin for organising the club’s 50th birthday cake.

Results are HERE

Planners comments: Selkirk Hill is a funny kind of place – we all know it well enough that we’ve probably visited every decent control site ! So it’s tricky to do something new, and make it challenging. On reflection, that was probably a bit more technical than was strictly necessary for a night event, though that said, every control was on or near a path, and there were always path options to connect them. I tried to tempt you into taking cross country choices rather than ‘round the paths’, and tried to give you route choice decisions to make. In order to make the most of the complex pitted area, the course had a LOT of controls – but I felt that was necessary to prevent it being a simple fly-through on the larger paths. I suspect patience, keeping it slow and steady and really drilling down into the detail and always knowing where you were was what worked. Maybe ask Ellie what the secret was !

Thanks to everyone for coming on what turned out to be a pretty miserable and damp evening !

Paul

The results from this evenings night event in Hawick are HERE

Thanks to John for organising the event to Pauline for organising my birthday cake 🙂

Lindsey

The results from this evening’s night event are HERE

Thanks for a great turnout for the first of the Sprints, even the weather was kind after the previous few days of wet murk. Impressive running from Ian, not sure he could have done much better in daylight, (although there was a full moon). Great run also from Ellie with fourth fastest time and well done Fiona Booth, first timer – only caught out by #12 being on south side of hedge.
I think adding the BGH Residency area gave an extra twist to the Darnick map – switching between urban, parkland and campus added to the test. Although not technically difficult, there was some route choice, and short legs can be trickier than they look: Ian took nearly 200% of fastest split on #8 to #9, but still won!
Thanks everyone for coming and hope you all enjoyed the evening, see you at Hawick next week.

Robin

Planner/Organiser