The 11th Glasgow Park Championships took place on 6 December and, as the Maxwell family always seem to enjoy the event, Jim and I decided to give it a go this year. Getting up at 6am wasn’t ideal but we were at Springburn Park in Glasgow by 9.30am on a nice dry and sunny morning. It’s quite a small park but it has lots of paths, ponds and a large enfenced rockery and, once we’d twigged that the controls didn’t have control flags, we got on OK and it was a quick 14+ minutes for me, 20+ minutes for Jim on a slightly longer course. At the finish we were given an envelope with the details of the next venue – Kelvingrove Park – with over an hour to get there.

STAG-HQ was a room in Kelvin Hall which was quite civilised. Leg 2 was marginally shorter than leg 1, 13+ minutes for me, finishing in front of Kelvingrove Gallery. After downloading we were given instructions for Leg 3 – Cathkin Braes, proper orienteering rather than park. Jim and I left promptly intending to have a cup of tea when we got there but a small series of navigational cockups on the way meant too little time for this.

Leg 3 is a chasing start and there was only a minute separating the 2-6th positions on W40+ so it ended up a bit frantic but I managed to make up a place on my 20 minute course. By halfway through I was puggled though ! Jim suffered the same and finished 7th despite walking most of the course. Karen had a good day by finishing 1st in the Junior Girls class, Kirstin also had 3 good runs to finish 4th on the Open Women class only 31 seconds behind the winner – an excellent result despite Cathkin Braes not being her favourite area. Eileen was 7th on W40+ having lost a crucial 2 minutes on Leg 1, and Ian was 8th on M40+. James Tullie was 5th on Open Men and Douglas mispunched Leg 3 so didn’t feature in the prize list on this occasion. Prizegiving took place in the failing light and slight dampness but all in all it was a good day out and competed in a fun spirit. Definitely recommended to anyone who hasn’t tried it yet. STAG roped in some TINTO’s to help but it’s an amazing amount of work from a small band of O-fanatics, led by Terry O’Brien (and I mean that in a kind way !).
Results etc are here