The Halloween weekend saw East Area clubs hosting the Junior Inter Areas Weekend, which combines a relay on the Saturday with an overnight stay for all that wish and the individual event on the Sunday. The event saw juniors from our three areas, East North and West, travel to take part in the weekend.

The Scottish Score Championships planned in the glorious Culbin were due to be combined with the 6th Scottish Orienteering Urban League (SOUL) event of the 2026 Season on the last weekend in October in what was billed as the Northern Lights Weekend by Moravian Orienteers. However Storm Boelo had other ideas!

At the Interarea weekend the first winners of the Junior Volunteer Awards were announced. Listening to feedback from last years inter areas, Development Director Mary Williams created the Junior Volunteer Awards to recognise and encourage juniors who are taking their first steps into volunteering. These awards are not about being the best at a role — they are about having a go and learning! 

 The prestigious Young Orienteer of the Year award was also awarded at the Inter Areas.  This award is awarded to one Junior each year who has contributed greatly to orienteering. This can be anything from making events happen, helping run club sessions and getting friends and family involved. This award is sponsored by Tulloch Homes and has been handed out each year since 2018.

Thanks to our members from across Scotland who joined us on Monday evening for the final community conversation in the 2026 series. This session was focused on coaching and the issues facing coaches. We were lucky to have a wealth of coaching experience present for the discussions.

As the clocks go back and the dark evenings draw in, look out your headtorch as night orienteering season is upon us! Many of us orienteers embrace the darker evenings as the perfect opportunity to do some night orienteering. Night orienteering is a great way to improve your navigation skills and get out of the house on a mid-week evening. 

Monday 2nd November sees the next of our Community Conversations taking place with a focus on Coaching. Our Coaching and Volunteer Officer, Judy Bell, will lead the session with the focus on providing coaches with the opportunity to share and discuss coaching ideas as well as discussing what opportunities coaches want to develop their capabilities.

As we were planning our series of Summer of Sport family friendly taster sessions we were delighted when the adverts caught the eye of Rachel Bell, a presenter on BBC Radio Scotland’s Out of Doors program. Out of Doors is broadcast weekly covering features on Scotland’s countryside, nature, wildlife and outdoor activities.

Rachel Bell signed up to bring her family along to Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen to join in the fun and find out more about orienteering. Listen in to hear more about their adventures (the feature on orienteering starts 10 minutes in).

Forth Valley Orienteers and Interlopers travelled down to West Sussex to compete in the CompassSport Cup finals. The Interlopers team narrowly missed out on defending their 2025 CompassSport Trophy title as Borderliners scored just 11 points more to win. However, FVO were victorious in the CompassSport Cup competition as they beat rival team South Yorkshire for the first time in five years.

After a brief hiatus, the Scottish Elite and Development Squad (SEDS) is returning. The group has an important role in delivering TD5 training for elite and performance athletes. However, we have sourced funding from sportscotland to deliver TD3-4 training to provide an opportunity for all Scotland based 18-39 year-olds to stay in the sport after graduating from junior and adult newcomer pathways.

Having not managed to recruit someone to deliver the administration for SEDS, an agreement was made with Edinburgh University Orienteering Club who have now taken on the SEDS weekend administration. In exchange they have received a grant which allows them to continue to deliver their performance coaching support programme and open it out to performance athletes at other settings of further education. Some of the grant funding will also be used to support students from other settings of further education in attending SEDS weekends. This is an exciting approach to developing student orienteering in Scotland as there is now representation at nine universities across the country.

EUOC will determine dates and types of training involved in the programme through discussions with a newly established SEDS Athlete Panel made up of Mairi Eades, Andy Kitchen, Niamh Hunter, and James Ackland. 

The calendar includes six training weekends between October 2026 and September 2027:

Andy Kitchen and Matthew Clarke have expressed interest in the coaching of TD3-5 levels. We also hope that young coaches can get involved in delivering TD3-4 training to allow them to build their experience and confidence whilst being supported by more experienced coaches.

Accommodation will be organised for each weekend to increase the accessibility of SEDS and reinforce the group’s social environment. This will likely be in village halls, but anyone may join the training whilst using other local accommodation if they prefer.

All SEDS communication will take place through the existing WhatsApp community (link to join sent upon request). Welfare and safeguarding are a priority within the group to ensure it is a safe and fun environment. Informative final details will be released ahead of the weekends so that participants know exactly what to expect, and all participants will be required to sign the SEDS code of conduct before attending any group activities. The SEDS code of conduct and communication pathways will be monitored by the SEDS Athlete Panel and a representative from the SOA. 

The SOA are also launching SEDS social media channels to share what the group gets up to! Be sure to follow SEDS on Facebook and Instagram. More information can be found on the SEDS page of our website.

The beginning of October saw the Scottish Senior Home International (SHI) team travel to Northern Ireland to take on England, Wales and Ireland – and win! – after three tiebreaks!