Moravian Orienteers

Scottish Sprint Championships
Recently we saw yet more Moravians on the podium. You can see the four medallists on the right. Andrew gold and Colin silver - 11 seconds apart in the Men's Super Vets Class, Morag was the bronze medallist in the Women's Vets and Eddie was also bronze in the men's Ultra Vets. The event was run round an estate in Kirkintilloch, followed by a bonus urban event round a local wildlife reserve.

The Club committee has agreed that grants are available from club funds to support Junior members attendance at residential Junior Regional Orienteering Squad training tours and competitions as Juniors representing Scotland and GB.  Applications should be made on this form to the club treasurer (finance@mor.scot) in advance of the activity, and to meet the deadlines of either 31st March or 30th June.

Congratulations to the Moravian orienteers who took part in the Scottish Nights O  championships at Balmoral recently.  This year seven Moravian orienteers (McLuckies, Howards and Rob P) charged up their head torches and travelled over to Royal Deeside, to run in the forest on the Balmoral Estate.   The terrain at Balmoral is steep and rocky in places, and because of recent storms some trees were down. That gave the event planner Nick Hale some headaches but he still managed to produce some challenging courses. Thanks to MAROC for a great event. The weather during the evening was cold but dry, but finding your way around Balmoral in the dark is quite a challenge, but the woods have one particular helping feature - the Royal Cairns.  The area we were running in included Princess Louise’s, Princess Helena’s and Prince Arthur’s cairns.  These proved to be very helpful when deep in the forest at night, not quite sure where you are!

Finlay won M16 with a dominant run, Rob won MUltraVet - his 1st Scottish title, retaining the trophy for the club won previous by Eddie Harwood and Alan Halliday (twice), Kate was 2nd on W16 and Morag 3rd on WVet. Well done everyone!

Michael Bishenden Reports: 
Recently Michael Bishenden, Kate McLuckie, Isobel Howard, and Jane Halliday (who was helping with the coaching), all participated in a Race Preparation Camp with the British Orienteering Talent Squad. The four-day camp, which was based around the Oban area and with everyone being accommodated at Oban Youth Hostel, was the ideal venue. The aim of the camp was preparation for the upcoming selection races such as the BOC (British Champs) and the JK Festival. Read the full report.

Some good news - we have been successful in securing grant funding from the Orienteering Foundation and Scottish Orienteering Association to support a new paid position, Club Development Officer (CDO). This is a part-time post, working an average of 14 hours a week over 40 working weeks from April this year. We hope to extend the post by a further 12 months subject to funding. The CDO’s role will be to focus on orienteering in five key community ‘hubs’ of Forres, Elgin, Lossiemouth, Fochabers and Buckie. The intent is to capitalise on momentum that will be created by the Moray 2023 Scottish 6 Days this summer. The key areas the CDO will focus on are develop orienteering skills in young people leading to participation in Moray 2023, establishing regular family sessions in each of the five communities, identifying local young orienteers to become Young Ambassadors for Moray 2023, and coordinating communication and publicity of club events and activities during and after Moray 2023 in order to maintain awareness and interest of orienteering in the local community.

Gordonstoun Regional

We hope everyone enjoyed their run today!  Many thanks for coming and we hope to see you at our next event.  We have one item of lost property - a pair of black Sprayway over-trousers, age 6/7.  Please contact the organiser (andrewandlizcampbell@outlook.com).  Many thanks.

NNC Round 5

Well, Andrew Campbell gave us some great night O last night at Forres Golf Course. Good control placing on a high visibility area meant you had to be sure of the feature you wanted. Hopping the Stile into Muiry Woods changed everything, plenty of paths, not necessarily going in the right direction and a mix of fast runnable woods and thicker blocks with heather to slow you down. Back over the stile to the golf course and nothing visible.... plenty of vegetation blocks but a long way away, outside head torch distance, so compass essential.

Assembly was in the clubhouse, warm and cosy, locker rooms to change in and food available made for a very social occasion. Thanks to Karen Fraser - Organiser, Andrew Campbell - Planner, and Steve Smirthwaite - Controller, for putting on the event, and to Forres Golf Club for allowing us their excellent facilities.

If you liked the Golf Course you'll love our next event at Gordonstoun School, its a sprint with a mix of urban and parkland - entries open NOW at Si Entries, see details on the event page linked in the diary.

Entries are now open for this event - Forestry and Land Scotland have finally granted permission. This is quite short notice, so we do not have the time as in previous years to collate information from individuals and then enter centrally. So Club members are encouraged to enter individually via SI entries.  For further information, see the Event page.

Quarry Wood Local Event
What a day we had last Saturday. Despite a really bad weather forecast the Moravian weather kicked in once again and we had a beautiful sunny morning in Quarry Wood. Thanks to Kaisa, Eian and Ida for three great courses. It was also really good to see Rosie back at the downloads again after her forced sabbatical. Welcome back!
The results and Routegadget are up on the results page of the website.

Club Awards and Quiz Night
Saturday evening was also a great success. A large number of awards were presented (see above), an amazing spread was produced as usual and a fascinating quiz was produced by Alan. Thanks Alan. And thanks too to Andrew and Liz who organised the whole evening. There are one or two more photos on our club Facebook page.

BACKGROUND  The Scottish 6 Days will be hosted by Moravian Orienteers in 2023 (July 30th – August 4th ) and although we are a fairly small club we will, as usual, rise to the occasion.

This bi-annual orienteering festival attracts orienteers from all over the UK and beyond; we already have entries from Scandinavia, Australia, USA and New Zealand. There will be courses for everyone: toddlers dashing round a String Course; all junior and senior age classes (M/W 10 – 80+) as well as Colour Coded from White to Green.

All the information you need to pre-enter and get excited about being part of this great event is available on the Moray 2023 website, which will be regularly updated as more details are finalised.

https://scottish6days.com/

ENTRIES   Entries are managed via Fabian4 and as well as entering the orienteering events, there is merchandise available to pre-order: specially designed Moray 2023 O tops, hoodies, t-shirts, buff and even a 'gymsac' to hold your O kit.  

Whether this will be your first  - or twenty-first  - experience of a high-quality multi-day orienteering you won't be disappointed. Very early bird rates apply until January 31st 2023 and rise steadily after that.

Well we had an excellent event planned by Steve Smirthwaite and organised by Nikki Howard. Early runners only got hailed on, later runners got snow, which made visibility quite poor. The results are on our results page and the NNC league results can be found here:

https://munroleagues.com/leagues/Northern Night Cup 22-23

Next event is by INVOC see their website for details or SI entries are open SI Entries