WhiteKirk Hill SoSOL
Sunday 30 April 2023

Organiser’s Report

A big thank you to Whitekirk Hill for giving us permission to use not just the area, but also the car parking, toilets and foyer which made the organising so much easier than in many areas, and to the Events Manager, Jenny Woodford, for all her help with this.
Thank you as well to Roger Scrutton of ESOC for Controlling the event. He paid several visits to the area to check that the courses were suitable and of the correct standard, and was there at 8 am on the day to confirm that the controls were in the correct places with the correct numbers on each. Finding a controller to do this was not straightforward and brought home to us that we need more, and younger, people to take on this role.
During Covid and lockdown we ran our events, as required, on the minimum of helpers but now we are aware we need to widen our pool of experienced people and were able to recruit more than 20 members and friends to volunteer somewhere, and this number meant that everyone had the opportunity to compete as well, and almost all took this up. Thank you to all the helpers.
The area was first mapped for orienteering in 1988 and the original black and white hand-drawn map was on display. It was used for several years before the area became a golf course. It was at a Wednesday evening event there in those days that I remember going away rather frustrated because there was no results display, not even the ‘washing lines’ of stubs that were the norm then. I thought I had had a good run but wanted to know if I really had, so it is something I endeavour to have at all events however small. The live display on screens was stopped during Covid and live results went online but my feeling is that the screens add to the atmosphere of competition.
The accounts for the event have not been worked out yet, but the commercial mapping of the area was £550 which is relatively cheap for an area this size. Being quite open, the Lidar data provided the mapper with a good base map before he set foot in the area.
We certainly hope to be back there again.

Sheila Strain

Controller’s Report

Whitekirk Hill is a gem of a new, wee orienteering area, and it was both a privilege and very enjoyable to be Controller there today. Although no more than a kilometre north-south and east-west, Duncan planned some excellent courses up to and including Blue: Brown was a bit more difficult, but simply having a Blue/Brown course and allowing runners to declare their choice worked well. In practice, the Brown was a middle distance course for those who ran it and a winning time of 38min was about right. A number of runners mentioned that the area would be suitable for a night event or a relay. The other stand-out feature was how busy the event was, with String, a pre-event warm up session and a beginners training event running alongside. I think ELO punches above its weight for a small club, running an extensive programme of small and medium-sized events and having an excellent team of knowledgeable volunteers who always turn to. Congratulations to ELO for an excellent event.

Roger Scrutton

Results

• Simple results are here.
• Routegadget allows you to plot your route, either by hand or by downloading a gpx file from a watch or phone and to look where you and others went.
• Winsplits Online gives another way of comparing your times for each leg.
• British Orienteering collect results from all events and publish ranking scores for larger events.
• The SoSOL-2023 table after 3 races.