ESOC Score.

Buoyed up by success last weekend I hoped to stay on a roll for another event, this one hosted by Edinburgh Southern Orienteering Club on sunday in Holyrood Park and Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh.

In a 'score' event you're out on the course for a certain amount of time, in this case either 45 or 60mins. During that time you have to visit as many checkpoints as you can manage and return to the finish point, not necessarily in the same place as the start point! Route choice and the order you visit CPs is totally up to you. Different checkpoints are worth different point values, in this case varying between 10 and 60 points. Generally speaking, lower value CP's won't be as far out from start/finish, or as tricky to find as higher value CP's, but there will be more of them. Points are deducted from whatever you collect for being over the alloted time limit on finishing, in this case 1 point per 6 secs. Winner is whoever bags the most points. There were a total of 30 checkpoints cunningly concealed on the course and the chance to amass 920 points in total if you were good enough.

My total of 380 points (-6 for overtime, clocking in at 60:34) was enough to put me seventh! Seventh from the bottom of a field of 49 on the 60min course that is. In other words, a pretty dire performance. As a sometime hill runner I should be used to life's ups and downs, ha-ha, but some technique honing is obviously required if I'm to move up the ranks with this orienteering thing! The winner racked up 815 points managing to visit all but 4 CPs. I got to just 13 of them. My major fault was spending too long looking for one particular CP which eluded me, even though it was only a 10 pointer! What an idiot. And occasionally overshooting, which stems from trying to go too fast and not concentrating. 'Curb your enthusiasm' would seem to be a golden rule with this game.

In my defence, I did hear some grumbles from other competitors about various pathways either not being on the map, or not being on the ground any more where they should have been. And, let me tell you, those various little bumps of hills about Arthur's Seat are bloody steep dont-you-know!

Still- at least it wasn't pissing down! The sun shone, the hill was criss-crossed with orienteers, runners, joggers, walkers....you name it. Solitiude was not the order of the day! Top of Arthur's Seat was bristling with folk and the festival atmosphere was carried right out of the town and up to this fantastic vantage point. Sarah and Fynn had come along to cheer me on, and afterward we chilled out with a walk up the Royal Mile to watch various street performers doing their thing.