Faskally weekend
Posted on 17 Feb, 2010 by Lynne Walker | Filed under Orienteering
Way back in the mists of time (around August 2009) Terry O’Brien asked if I would control the Scottish Night Champs (SNC) at Faskally near Pitlochry. This is a lovely wood full of detail but many paths and tracks. The SNC would form part of a weekend: controllers’ course Saturday afternoon, SNC Saturday evening and the Knoll Kollection on Sunday. Hopefully this package would attract a reasonable size of entry.
Dougie Condy was planning with Terry organising. Dougie began the planning early and we went through several versions of the courses before arriving at the final ones. Taping was carried out in November on a very wet day while I had a dry cold day for checking the taping and test running some legs! Dougie and I arranged a site meeting in December and discussed some sites where I felt the tape should be moved or the map was not accurate enough. Terry was unable to be at the site meeting as it was school day.
Then the snow came and covered the ground in the area for the best part of a month. I was very glad that the taping had been carried out early so there were no worries about control sites.
The forecast for Saturday 13th February was good – it was predicted to be a dry but cold evening. Paul was attending the controllers’ course at the Scout Hall in Pitlochry and I was going round to wake up the units. I started this at 3pm and finished by 4:30pm, having covered about 10km in the process. There was a lot of debris on the forest floor – branches brought down by the heavy snowfall – and this meant that the forest was rougher and slower than when I had test run some legs in November. Dougie had cleared the debris around the control sites.
The evening was as predicted and Terry had his helpers allocated to their tasks. I ended up on download (print box and small printer) until Paul arrived back from his run. The small printer was not happy as it was cold and this drains the battery quickly so many competitors had wonky printed splits. It all downloaded into Autodownload OK and the results on the website are fine. Unfortunately, after running the start for an hour, Trish Carmichael fell soon after the start of her course and hurt her arm. It turned out that she had actually broken the humerus (upper arm). Competitors seemed to enjoy their courses and early/late runners reported hearing owls hooting in the woods.
Sunday 14th February was Terry’s Knoll Kollection and there was drizzle in the air. You have an hour to visit as many of the knolls as possible on the map – there are 80! Route planning is vital, especially for someone like me who is slow on the hills. I decided not to visit the craggy hill immediately to the south of the car park (the start/finish point) but to try and get around as many as possible of the rest – except for the two in the far north of the area. The knolls are marked with a T-bar, electronic unit and a piece of red/white tape so no large kite to draw you in.
I got totally confused around the area of dense knolls south of the previously mentioned craggy hill. Jan Bryan-Jones told me later that I had passed by one knoll and not seen it, and I was about 2m away. Things went quite well and the main marshes were crossable if you were careful. Unfortunately I caught my foot in barbed wire at one control and fell, landing on my pinkie which is now a very bruised colour and staved. Ah well, it will recover.
As things were going well I had some time to spare so visited the controls I had left near the finish and then some more around the small loch in the middle of the map. In total I visited 55 knolls and am quite pleased with the result. I failed to find two I went for and I could have planned my route a bit better and maybe found 60. However, 55 knolls is the same number as I found four years ago so the old body must still be hanging together! (The rules had to be changed two years ago so that result is not comparable).
Paul and I then helped to collect some of the T-bars and took the area NE of the road going towards Faskally House. This was 15 control sites so Paul went off to get the two northernmost ones (by map memory, very impressive for him!) while I collected others and dumped them on the track for him to carry.
Things were all collected by 1pm so we then thought ‘Where shall we go for lunch?’ We narrowed the choice down to either the Bistro in Dunkeld for soup/cake/flapjack or the Ben Lawers Hotel (Loch Tay) for a meal and no cooking that evening. I was given the vote so chose the latter. A very good choice as they do food all day and the menu has some quite different dishes on it. I had belly of pork and Paul had a steak. Oh yes, we had pudding as well! It was very relaxing sitting by the fire, the weather was clear so good views out of the windows. If it had been planned we could have called it a Valentine Day meal. Jam sandwich that evening!
A very enjoyable weekend with good orienteering and an excellent meal to round it off!
I am a level 4 orienteering coach and a qualified Assessor & Coach Educator. I have been orienteering for xx years and have coached on many foreign tours.