Scottish 6 Days: Tay 2009
The Scottish six-days, from what I could tell (having never been to one before) provides
some of the best Orienteering in the country, but also some quality banter and stories
which seem to fuel idle pub-talk for the two years between events. This year's event was
based at Perth Racecourse, with the events taking place around the river Tay.
After an hour of packing the car and a five hour trip up (using little petrol considering
how fast it was going most of the time) we arrived, and I got a bit excited and did my best
to chew up the youth campsite (it was a bit damp) the previously shiny car was looking a
bit more prepared for a week of dirt-tracks and fields filled with cow-shit.
The tent was pitched, Shminty's air-bed took up most of it, other ShUOCers
(and soon-to-be-ShUOCers) arrived and formed a ShUOC Ghetto and ASDA was raided they'd
rather nicely reduced Strongbow to a price at which it was almost worth drinking. Little
happened on the first night, save a bit of banter mainly centring around Spongey's 'human
tampon' escapades at JWOC. Nice. The campsite manager dug himself a big hole ahead of the
rest of the week in trying to enforce an 11pm curfew.
Day 1 - After a night trying not to get too close to Dan (Stop talking funky to me!), on
Sunday the O started at a new area spelt Dalrulzion but pronounced something else. It offered
pretty tough and damp but nice forest terrain with both high and low visibility Orienteering,
along with a bit of fairly easy, fast open moorland for the longer courses. The main
challenge was distinguishing veg boundaries and not get slowed up or lost in the green, and
also keep going up the hills! Naturally a few mistakes were made at the beginning of the week,
but none of the 20minute epics that were once my trademark! The event also acted as a World
Ranking event for the elite competitors, so some pretty rapid times were set. The sun shone,
the orienteering was great, and Dan got a bit excited at Lucozade freebies being handed out
and ate them instead of mixing them with water. The boredom of a traffic jam on the way home
was broken slightly by the shortness of Jack Wood's very short shorts. Back at the campsite
the ShUOC and EUOC ghettos merged, with PeterG (no longer looking like Meatloaf as he did at
BUCs) sparking most of the banter.
Day 2 (Monday) again gave glorious weather and a shorter drive to the event at Kinnoull and
Deuchny Hills. This again offered forest Orienteering, but with more paths and quicker
running than the previous day in a generally high visibility forest, with courses finishing
over rapid fields. It was an odd area to be found in Scotland, seeming more like Southern
England areas. A bit of fannying and running too quickly to look at compass/map properly
lead to some inventive mistakes, but I was getting into the swing of things by the end of
the day. An uphill finish suggested the run-in competition might heat up, but I'm blaming
having a slower SI card than Dan on it not doing so. Can't remember what happened on the
campsite (nothing exciting) but some idiot called Graeme had their eyebrows shaved off. He
looked (and acted) like a tit for the rest of the week.
Day 3 saw a long drive north to Tullochroisk for a mix of typical Scottish forest with lots
of varying vegetation, moorland with big features and long slopes, and complex moorland
contour detail on the top of a ridge. It was wet and windy, but not too bad once you got
going, and a great event missed by those who decided to stay in bed when they saw the
weather. Misjudging the time meant I had to leg it the 2.5km to the start, getting to my
box 20 seconds before I started. Even the distraction of a rather pretty scandi (who I
could swear was following me around the area) didn't result in many mistakes.
Thankfully, once we got back to Perth it was quite dry we didn't quite like the idea of
trying to party on the rest-night in our own tents. We'd stocked up on beer and once we'd
trialled Ralph and Treb's pint-downing abilities (bring on SPOOK weekend!), the festivities
got going with a big game of Danger-Can, resulting in Beasant cutting his head and Andrew
Tullie loosing (or is it winning?) spectacularly. PeterG proposed a variant on the game
Danger-Wank which had few takers (i.e. none). The funnel was then rolled out with Dan
chugging EUOC's leftover noodle-juice before everyone else had a go with more palatable
contents, and Ralph's 'magical refilling funnel.' After much talk back in Sheffield, I
challenged Dan to a naked furlong, which seemed to go unnoticed (apart from the adults/young
children in the ceilidh). Once Ralph had chased me around in my pants (there's a
naked man!) we left him to pass out (although he did wake up to chase poo-boy when he
slapped him), and I spent the rest of the night having conversations with 16-year-olds
about how they were pricks, and getting death threats off a Celtic fan. By now Nixon
had turned up and was holding court. Beasant was being hilarious and Spongey pulled off
one of the best cock-blocks ever seen. I remember Speakey turning up, but don't recall
hearing about his naked lap of the race-course taking in all the jumps (apparently his
challenger bruised his cock) until the next morning. An argument then started between Nixon
(never!) and the campsite manager, which quickly moved off us being noisy to how all British
mappers are crap and that volunteers should do their jobs properly.
Wednesday's Rest-day was spent recovering from a hangover, tactical chunders, dodgy takeaways
and then possibly the worst pub 'quiz' ever.
Day 4 saw us move to the beach at Tentmuir on the south of the Tay estuary. The hottest day
so far saw racing on a flat area of forested technical sand-dunes (with a few dull long legs
to join the interesting bits of the area up) with most courses going through low visibility
areas towards the end, meaning your compass-work had to be spot on. Needless to say mine
wasn't great, but only a few minutes were lost (not counting the 3 diversions made to the
drinks-points.)
After the racing a few of us headed to Tentsmuir beach just south of the competition area to
play in the sea which, despite chattering teeth, wasn't too cold. The muscles enjoyed the
chance of an ice-bath however. After a bit of 'football' and 'cricket' a big tunnel was made
whilst Spongey slept and Lucy and I got hungry. Once the tunnel was constructed, tested and
subsequently destroyed we headed back to the campsite for a BBQ which surprisingly didn't
result in food poisoning.
Day 5, on the north side of the Tay estuary in Barry Buddon, again offered technical sand-dune
orienteering (with a few dull long legs) on a baking day. Unfortunately, 90% of the area was
open so there were no trees to act as cover. Of course I'd decided to wear all black. Great
idea! However, being completely open and flat (apart for the sand-dunes) it meant you could see
exactly where you needed to get to and so run quickly on most legs. Even with having to stop
for two minutes to remove a thorn from my foot and spending six minutes fannying around in the
wrong place (looking for a control which was very close to a big army-target that you could see
from everywhere oops!) I was still chuffed with my run and showed my joy by exposing my nipple
(right) to Dan and his family on the run-in. Back at the campsite, despite being knackered
there was a bit of a party for the last night to finish off any remaining alcohol, attempt to
push cars away and tamper with poo-boy's tent.
The last day of competition was on high open moorland at Loch Ordie, offering good views if you
were moving slow enough. After a rough walk to the start I didn't intend to be travelling slow
enough to look at the views, telling myself that the roughness of the terrain would suit me.
Because of this I nailed the first 2 controls, but then the tiredness from the week caught up
with me and it was all I could do in the high heather, slow marshes and neck-high bracken to
jog-walk the course to bring to an end a really enjoyable week of quality O and good fun.
ShUOCers present at the Scottish: Nic, Lucy, Dan, Shminty, Abrams, Beasant, Matt Evans, Sophie,
JT. Future ShUOCers present: Ralph, Treb.
Report by Nic Barber
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