About 40 DVO members attended this year’s Scottish 6-days. Stuart Swalwell collected these anonymous accounts!
Our 10th S6D, and our family voted it the best yet. Certainly, it wasn’t my best orienteering performance – the best I could manage was 3/4 of the way down the field, my fitness and skills failing me badly. But the courses, the terrain, the scenery, superb and friendly organisation combined to make it a lovely week. Probably our biggest win was our lovely house – carefully selected a full year before the event – with red squirrels in the garden and easy access to miles of walks for our dog.
The terrain wasn’t varied – no open fell or reclaimed sand dunes – but the undulating forests were lovely. Bramble-free and runnable (if you were fit enough to prance through heather, bilberry, and juniper, which I wasn’t).
After 6 months of injuries and poor fitness, a week in Scotland has rekindled my enthusiasm! Time to book accommodation for the Lakes 5 next year.
First S6D as DVO members was a great opportunity to get to know a very supportive group. We particularly appreciated the Vincents’ picnic and the air show.
The weather was perfect and the midges were on holiday elsewhere.
Orienteering terrain was consistently tough and we were delighted to find a runnable path on the last day! Making mistakes became the norm but really pleased to find (eventually) all our controls. Looking forward to going faster in Perthshire, 2027.
We had a great 6-day this time – Deeside was bathed in late summer splendour with its fields of ripe corn and Victorian towns and villages. And it only rained at night. I normally approach with trepidation as the orienteering is tough, but I didn’t make any mistakes longer than 3 or 4 minutes. I wasn’t super fast though!
After Day 3, the Vincents invited DVO back to their holiday accommodation in Braemar for a picnic lunch, and afterwards we climbed Morrone, my 104th Corbett. The Sprint at Ballater was fun and I spoke some German with people from the club in the next town to our daughter in Thüringen, Germany.
Another highlight was paddleboarding by the Cambus O’May suspension bridge with Dave, though to be fair we used it in kayak mode as the water was too shallow to risk falling off! We could see eels, the water was so clear!
We’ve survived our first S6D! O-Child and O-Dad made the long drive up to join the rest of the DVO family, but not fully appreciating what was coming. The WhatsApp chat at the time of entering was for O-Dad to enter M45S and so I did. Beginner’s luck on Day 1 meant I got around quick enough – this Scottish stuff isn’t so hard after all. BUT then Day 2 arrived… and the ‘S’ wasn’t short enough! I can now confirm that the ‘S’ does not stand for ‘Short’, but for ‘Stupid’ and the ‘L’ is not ‘Long’, but Lunatic! I have no idea what the ‘E’ is for. Day 2 was tough for O-Child as well, but she fared much better the other days, much to the pride of O-Dad. She was motivated by dollops of Ballater ice-cream (a good run equalling two scoops). We had an awesome week and the weather was splendid. We’ll be back in two years, if only to see the pet tick that O-Child had to leave behind. Anyone for tick salad?
I volunteered as a helper on Day 5 and was given the role of bog attendant. I reported in to the Day Organiser at the start of my shift and she told me I was “amazing”. (At this point I hadn’t done anything). Following my 2 hour stint, she came across to me and told me again I was “amazing”. (I think she might have taken an e-learning programme on ways to motivate volunteers). As I was putting on my O kit back in the car park, I pondered whether I could keep up this accolade out in the forest. Well, as it turned out, I could! The forest was runnable – unlike some of the previous days – I made no mistakes and finished with my highest ranking points this year! Amazing! I wonder if the DVO Coaches should build motivation talks into their training sessions. Tales from my bog duty will have to wait another day as you may be eating your breakfast/lunch/tea/supper when reading this.
With our accommodation being so far away from the event centre we took the decision to only enter Days 1, 3 and 4 though some of us did the Sprint in Ballater. The comments need to be taken in that context and recognising that the event is essentially an amateur event with volunteers.
Overall, we enjoyed the experience, even though we did not cover ourselves in glory. However, we had a three-year-old with us whose parents wanted him to go round the White Course with an adult. This was Course 23, also run by the M10B and W10B competitors, and whilst the winning times of 14:31 to 21:04 are largely okay, the tail end varied from 69:49 to 123:12, excluding the Middle Distance event. This course should be encouraging youngsters into the sport, not putting them off with such lengthy times, notwithstanding other issues such as controls being passed that were not on the course, or decision points not having a control.
One other major concern was that there seemed to be quite a discrepancy between the lengths of the M80 course compared with other members of the party. The British Orienteering Guidelines give a ratio of 0.41 for an M80 to an M21 so on checking the length of the M80 courses against the M21L lengths, excluding the Middle Distance event, we found that the ratio was between 0.24 and 0.29. We used 100m of climb to be equivalent of 1km on the flat.
It seems that the Planners might not be reading the rules and guidelines. Indeed, the thought crossed our minds that British Orienteering should introduce a new set of rules whereby courses of White to Light Green standard can only be planned by a parent who has young children and the TD5 courses of Green and shorter should only be planned by someone over 50.
As older competitors with less flexible joints, the going underfoot became hard to impossible at times, with no obvious route to avoid it as the map did not show the terrain as it sometimes was.
Q: What were all those short green lines on the Balfour map?
With barely a hint of rain or excessive heat, the only challenges faced were those of the Scottish forests and moors, the technical orienteering and the terrain, from sublime, grass-carpeted birch woods, to deep heather, lush bracken, and forest workings. Each encounter followed by the opportunity to compare courses and routes, bruises and tick counts in a club sprawl between the run-in and the catering vans.
