Full results are now HERE. Apologies they weren’t on the address shown on some of your splits – fall-out from the website problems I had mid-week.

Planner/Organiser’s Report

This was my first time planning at Bowmont, so it was quite enjoyable getting to experience a forest in more detail than you normally do just running round.

Storm Eowyn rather interrupted the planning and organising process for Bowmont and caused the delay and change of date. It also meant that I had to revise many of my original planning ideas. I hope that you found the resulting courses both challenging and interesting.

The Light Green was my attempt to join up the most technically challenging bits of Bowmont with some decent route choice alternatives but without making it too rough going underfoot. I was very impressed by the speed of the front runners! The Red was planned as a runners course, more on tracks but still with some interesting route choice and visiting some nice bits of the forest. Yellow and Orange are aimed to be stepping stones for beginners – on reflection Yellow was perhaps slightly too difficult, perhaps exacerbated by paths blocked by fallen trees!

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t quite as nice as the day before when I was putting controls out but it was still pretty good for the time of year – and Bowmont was as dry underfoot as I have seen it at this time of year.

I hope you all enjoyed yourself.

Thanks to everyone who helped on the day but particularly Lindsey who gave up her run to organise registration and download.

John Tullie

Full results are now HERE

Roxburgh Reivers again decided to use this year’s winter Eildon Hills and surrounding woodlands “Come and Try Orienteering” event as a small fundraiser for a local cause. Last year’s winter Eildon event raised money for the Harris Trust. This year we decided to raise funds for the Melrose based Tweed Valley Mountain Rescue Team who are there 24/7 as emergency backup support for so many outside activities.

Our fundraising efforts were very kindly and generously supported by regular orienteers Les and Margaret Dalgleish, who are members of ESOC (Edinburgh South Orienteering Club) and their close family members who donated the fantastic sum of £150 to mark their Golden Wedding anniversary which was the previous day. Les and Margaret attend most Roxburgh Reivers events and RR congratulate them on their anniversary and thank them for their family’s generosity to our fundraiser.

Come and Try Orienteering events are low key but we still had a great entry of 54 individual participants, many trying orienteering for the first time. The weather was a bit damp and ground conditions were often very muddy but everyone seemed to enjoy the experience. The future of all sports clubs depends very much on younger people and new families getting involved and it was nice to see so many youngsters at the start – we had sixteen enthusiastic youngsters under the age of 12 years.

The Eildons in February is about as tough as it gets so well done to all who took part! Future events and locations should be much more pleasant so hope you can all come again. If anyone would like to join the club’s emailing list, for news of future events etc, then please email us at rrenquiries@roxburghreivers.org.uk

Overall the event raised £372.83 which will be sent to Tweed Valley Mountain Rescue Team in the next couple of days.

As always these events are only possible with a lot of help from club members before, during and after the event: Lindsey Knox who does a lot behind the scenes in all events with entries and admin; Robin Sloan for updating the map, Sam McKinnon who helped put controls out the afternoon before and early morning and helped collect them afterwards, John Tullie and Ian Maxwell for also helping collect controls in.

Many thanks to Andy Beverley, Countryside Ranger at Buccleuch Estates for helping with permissions.

Thanks everyone for supporting our event.

James, Planner / Organiser

The basic results are HERE

The adjusted handicap results are below. Well done to Max for an excellent run in the dark, beating the handicapper.