Thanks to everyone who turned up on such a nice autumn day, especially those of you who came from such far-flung places as Elgin and Hopeman! We enjoyed seeing you and hope that you enjoyed your course. It was also good to welcome the 8 youngsters from Aberlour House. For some of you it was your first taste of orienteering and you were certainly thrown in at the deep end out on the A course. It was good to see you all finding your way round OK – without any help at all from your teachers – we’re certain of that.

Quite a few of you ran the whole of your course (in some very good times as well). This is the idea of orienteering after all, but these small events are also a great way of improving your map reading if you tackle a harder course but take things more slowly. Once you get the hang of the map symbols and learn to navigate quickly, then you can really start to enjoy the challenge of orienteering at speed. You don’t have to be a great runner to do well – just ‘run smart’ and you’ll always be at the top end of the results list.

It was good to see the parents getting stuck in as well, and what a close competition it was with some very “smart running”! Ian Welsh was not quite so smart at one point though, and he ran straight past no 3 and lost a few seconds in the process. As a result he lost out to Nick Barr by just 2 seconds. This meant that the Barr family took the honours in both the junior and senior sections. We’re sure you’ll go on to great things!

On the subject of Aberlour House, Roo Hornby and I will be the club representatives at a meeting on 16^th November at Gordonstoun along with Moray Active Schools. We’re going to discuss the possibility of holding a Moray Schools Competition at Gordonstoun next April. They have a fantastic new map of their school grounds which are really quite extensive and offer some very challenging orienteering. We hope to be able to announce some exciting news about this soon.

Meanwhile we hope to welcome you all back to Roseisle on 1st November and then at our Forres event on 16^th November. Please bring your friends!

Mike Rodgers

Event Organiser