Spey 2007 – or how to spend your honeymoon?
The summer of 2007 turned out to be a ‘domestic’ one for Paul and myself. We had just moved his Dad up to Dunoon (from Eastbourne) and wanted to ensure that he was well settled into his new life. We need not have worried, it seems as if he has never lived anywhere else. Gill & Andy invited us for five days of sailing off the west coast when we had some excellent weather of fair breezes, little rain and some sun (OK, it was cool but you can’t have everything).
Our only plans for the summer centred on the bi-annual Scottish 6 Day event – Spey 2007. I was running five days of coaching immediately preceding the event and then we were both entered for all the 6 days of competition.
I had visited all of the training areas during May, except for Roseisle which I had had a walk around at New Year. Part of July was spent playing with OCAD to produce the training maps. I learnt a lot and felt quite pleased with the results. The idea of the coaching and training was to bring coaching to as many people as possible at TD3 and TD5 (Technical Difficulty – the larger the number the harder it gets!) My challenge was to plan about 15 controls for each site and these controls could be used by both levels. Roseisle was slightly different as controls would only be out for one day.
Coaching exercises and suggested courses emerged and were sent to Hilary at the National Centre for printing. This was her first experience of OCAD for course planning so she had a steep learning curve while listening to the instructions on the phone! Hilary also recruited people to put the controls out for us so everything would be in place for the coaching sessions.
Paul & I left home very early on Monday 30th July, all packed up for two weeks away. We arrived at Moor of Alvie (near Kincraig) and spent an enjoyable, sunny day coaching about 40 folk. No chance for a run ourselves as we just had to check out the cake shop Ross Lilley had recommended. So, if you are ever in the area take the back road from Loch Insh to Coylumbridge and visit the cake shop at the Inshriach plant nursery. Cake to die for (evidently inspired by Norwegian recipes) and a view of red squirrels and loads of birds thrown in for free. To round Monday off, we went to Lagganlia to give a talk and seminar on the use of RouteGadget to the M/W14 orienteering training camp.
After that long and busy day, we slept really well in the van, parked at Lagganlia. After breakfast it was off to Revack near Grantown-on-Spey. This was a very different area, consisting of three contrasting, forested hills. Unfortunately I had only checked the two northern hills and the southern-most one had a few glitches with the map. It also turns out that the map scale is not quite as stated (more like 1:11500 than 1:10000) but I had not paced at all when checking the control sites. This day was not as busy with about 25 folk coming along. We were glad of this as we went up to Roseisle (near Forres) after the coaching to place controls for the next day. Paul put out a TD3 attack point course while I placed the controls for a TD5 cross-country course.
Tuesday and Wednesday nights were spent locally with friends – use of the shower and washing machine was much appreciated! Wednesday was quite an early start as I wanted to put out ‘streamers’ for a line course on a contour only map – the ultimate challenge in a sand dune area and SO satisfying when you complete it!
I returned from putting out the streamers (I had a bit of a problem in one area when I really was not sure exactly where I was so I just did not place any streamers!) to find Hilary & Paul surrounded by hordes of folk. In total that day, we coached over 70 people. This was very satisfying, even if there was a lot of thinking on your feet and reacting to the problems people wanted analysed after their course. The day ended with the streamers and controls being collected in.
Thursday was a return to near Grantown-on Spey and a forest called Gaich. This is a forest of two halves, the eastern side being mainly runnable with mature, well spaced trees; the western side has brashings underfoot, low visibility and tight technical areas! Gill joined us this day and had practise seeking a pit on a diagonal downhill leg – one of the harder challenges you can set a competitor. I had a run around the eastern side and loved it.
We tried to have a meal in Grantown but everywhere was busy so we cooked in Gill’s van before bedding down for the night.
Friday was our only wet day of the week and even that was not too bad (by west coast standards). I had visited some controls on Beachen (Grantown-on-Spey) the previous evening and went round the rest in the morning. Again we had about 40 orienteers come along to the coaching sessions.
The coaching was then over and we went to the Spey 2007 event campsite. This was on a field near to Castle Grant with lovely views to the south. It was exposed to the strong wind and the tent suffered on the first evening. Gaffer tape is wonderful stuff as the tent held together for the week!
We met up with Ross on Saturday at Alvie, the site for the Day 1 event. EckO had the task of car parking and we were to lay out the lanes for this in two very flat fields. 10 metres for the two rows of cars and a 5 metre lane left between. Both Ross and Paul claimed to have 1 metre paces so Gill & I just placed the canes where we were told to. After the fields had been laid out, there was a discrepancy in what constituted a metre! The strain of laying out the car park meant that Gill, Paul & I had to have another visit to the cake shop.
Up early on Sunday and leave the campsite by 7am. The cars started to arrive at the event just after 7.30am! Niall & Carol also arrived to help. We then had a very busy 5 hours directing the vehicles. I was splitting them between car park 1 and car park 2 and was amazed at the cars that tried not to obey the direction my fluorescent arrow was pointing! We also had to question people as to whether they had come from Surrey where there had been an outbreak of Foot & Mouth disease; these people were then sent to a yard where the estate workers sprayed disinfectant on their wheels.
Once all the vehicles were parked we could have a run. The distance to my start was 3.4km with 175m climb. Gill did this distance twice, but more of that later!
After the run, it was immediately back to directing vehicles as they left, stopping them occasionally to let in things like an ambulance. We had volunteered to collect controls but were still busy with cars by the time they went out to do this. By this time it was raining hard but we had a covered area to sort out the controls and T bars in. We left the field at 7pm, just under 12 hours after arriving! Roos in Aviemore provided Niall, Gill, Paul and I with much needed sustenance. However the rain had had a detrimental effect on the campsite rendering the approach to the parking area liquid mud. We all got in – just – and heard the rain all night long.
Day 2 was down near Kingussie and we were just so glad that we had had Day 1 car parking. The fields for parking quickly turned to mud and queues formed back to the road. The Day 2 team did a fantastic job, getting all parked and everyone out of the field after the event. Getting back into the campsite was now impossible due to the muddy uphill entry.
Gill is a member of the Ladies Scottish Climbing Club and they have a hut near Loch Insh. She invited us back for coffee and eventually we went to the campsite to collect our sleeping bags so that we could spend a couple of nights with her in the hut. This was very sociable and might provide the incentive to get a solid roof over our heads for Tay 2009. We were also about 50m from the entrance to the assembly field for Day 3!
The orienteering during the rest of the week (Days 3, 4, 5 and 6) was varied.
- Day 3 at Inshriach West (parts of this map have had 3 different names!) had some excellent navigation followed by fast running and navigation towards the finish.
- Day 4 had the sand dunes of Culbin to contend with (I managed to have to relocate in an area of rather ‘green’ forest and decided to get out of it, find a feature I could locate on the map and try again – but I had problems getting out of the green as I had N on the compass going to S on the map). Whilst Lynne was having problems Paul had a good run but managed to run into a branch and scratched his cornea.
- Day 5 was rather a trudge for the unfit across some open moorland. The choice was deep, woody heather or tussocky wet bog which I reckon is not a choice at all as one is as bad as the other.
- Day 6 at Anagach had lovely forested moraine.
It is interesting to look at other people’s routes on RouteGadget, and also to examine the planning and see just what challenges were posed for us; for example, was there much chance of route choice on some legs?
During the 6 Days event, there is a rest day in the middle. It is possible to take part in organised activities on this day and this year there was a mountain bike orienteering race in the morning with a sprint race around Kingussie in the late afternoon. Paul & I had not entered any of these so we went for a 3.5km run in the morning (I had just bought a new pair of O shoes and felt I should try them before using them in competition); after another stop at the cake shop and up to Nethy Bridge for an off road cycle ride. Some of this was very off road – well you couldn’t see the track as it was so overgrown with bushes etc!
So, how did EckO members do in the overall results (4 out of 6 scores to count). Gill did very well and achieved a top 10 place (9th in W50L). For the rest of us, you will have to look a lot further down the lists! Paul achieved a bronze badge for the first time, Niall achieved a matching pair of blisters on his feet. Roanne Lilley completed white courses on her own for the first time and Julie is still recovering from the trauma of sending her daughter out into these huge strange forests!
At the start I mentioned that some people worked hard to be nominated for the club trophies. Apart from the excellent performances mentioned above, here is a start in the race for the wooden compass:
- Gill: Day 1: forgetting to take her compass to the start (which was over 3.5km away) and having to run more than her course length just to get to her start – set off for the start, get about 2km along the route, remember compass, run back to get it and sprint 3.5km to the start)
- Gill: Day 2: sitting in the climbing club hut wondering just how far she would have to go to the parking area for Day 3. Paul asked her to look out of the window as they were setting up Assembly about 50m away.
- Paul: Day 3: at the finish all competitors were given a banana - he could not see anything wrong with sticking this down his running tights.
There are probably other nominations but the folk certainly are keeping quiet!
What memories are there of the week?
- Meeting lots of friends and generally having a sociable time
- Some excellent orienteering
- Some excellent cake
- Wilfs
- A dodgy tent lasting us all week
- Visiting casualty to get Paul’s eye seen to
- The new EckO tops
- A pledge to try to get fitter and lose some weight to improve my results.
Put Tay 2009 in your diaries now!
Lynne Walker
20th August 2007
