Scottish Championships, Individual

Controller’s Report

The 2014 Scottish Individual Championships will be well remembered for a great venue, fine courses, impressive organisation, superb weather and two outstanding practitioners of our sport in Claire Ward & Graham Gristwood!

My sincere thanks to the members from ELO, EUOC, INT, KFO & RR for their input to this project on the day which brought to fruition all the hard work which Ken & Janice had undertaken over the past 3 months despite numerous difficulties.

The original venue of Linn of Tummel was ruled out by 3 Controllers including myself primarily due to accessibility & parking uncertainties. Working in a “Solutions Orientated School” and in my role as SOA Operations Director it fell to myself to identify an alternative venue. Highland Perthshire has a wealth of Orienteering terrain but also a number of seasonal restrictions.

And so STAG agreed to offer Dalnamein to the East Area – our SOL was due to be held here in April 2014 – and put on an alternative event at Faskally . As many of you are aware this event became SOL 2 & was well received.

Dalnamein is part of Atholl Estates but the Estate was unable to offer us a field for parking cars at this time of the year. Thanks to Colin Matheson’s involvement, we received the “OK” from Police Scotland to park on the waste ground & cul de sacs either side of the old bridge.

Having sorted parking the Estate then informed us, I think about 6 weeks ago, that thinning was due to take place before the end of May in the western wood & we were to minimise our use of the open areas due to nesting birds. This resulted in fewer routes/controls particularly in the intricate eastern part & our hearts being in our mouths right up until arriving on Friday 23rd to site controls.

Late on Saturday afternoon, I was made aware that one car from “The North” – registration begins with “NU”, refused to comply with the request to drive back to Calvine/Bruar and despite being asked not to, forced their way out onto the A9 & turned north. As yet we have not identified who this individual was.

The future of Dalnamein remains unclear as the upgrading of the A9 to dual carriageway status may take away the area used for Saturday’s Assembly if not some of the woodland.

Thank-you for supporting the 2014 Scottish Championships.

Terry O’Brien, STAG