ScotJOS Back and Training in the Forest

Published: May 21, 2021

The Scottish Junior Orienteering Squad have enjoyed two days of training back in the forest since the beginning of May.

On Sunday 2nd May they met at Dundurn at St Fillans to enjoy the technical challenge of this area – last used at the Six Days 2019.  Thanks to SOA for the use of the map and TAY for the contacts. Although we weren’t on the Golf Course this time, thanks to the Golf Club for allowing us to use their parking. Many also made use of their café for pre-training bacon rolls and/or post-training cakes and coffee.

Roger Goddard (FVO) planned a full set of training exercises, designed to get us back up to speed with our orienteering. Although the new ScotJOS squad was announced back in the autumn, this was the first time we had managed to all meet in person rather than on Zoom. Roger also provided some TD4 courses for the newcomers – to give them a gentle introduction to ScotJOS training.

The day finished with a relay, complete with SI timing, and the results including Routegadget are available at https://fvo.org.uk/events/2021/may/02/swat-and-scotjos-relays/

It was great to back in the forest with even the lunchtime showers and man-eating bogs seemed like fun.

Just 2 weeks later, on 16th May, ScotJOS met again, this time in the sunshine at Loch Vaa. Thanks to BASOC for planning the exercises and hanging the controls for us. The morning was spent on exercises focussing on contour interpretation and bearings using corridor exercises.  At lunchtime, we moved to North Granish – with a slight detour due to a navigation failure on the walk there! There was then a line exercise and a Sudoku challenge. Thanks to Hilary for coming along to explain the Sudoku challenge. This required some careful planning and tactics as well as orienteering skill.  The results are given below.

  1. Finlay, Alice K, James H
  2. Roger, Alice M, Mairi
  3. Kate, Matthew, Angus L
  4. Rachel, Laurence, Catriona
  5. Sam H, Adam, Fiona
  6. Colin, Dan, Paul (The Coaches!)
  7. Jamie C, Isobel, Iris
  8. Jonas, Angus I, Ellie
  9. Ewan, Ruth, Michael
  10. Ranolph, Jamie G, Daisy
  11. Lizzie, Yann, Faith

To allow these sessions to take place we are very grateful to all the parents who needed to chauffeur their offspring whilst shared transport is not possible, and to all the coaches who came to help and make the sessions happen with the added constraints of small groups/bubbles.

Hopefully the sessions will have blown off the cobwebs and helped prepare the juniors for the forthcoming competitions. Jon’s top tips to the juniors in their race preparations are useful for us all to remember!

  • Always have a plan for each leg.
  • Always use compass AND map reading on each leg
  • In a contour-rich area spot large features along the leg and use them to get close to the control circle, then…
  • Always check the information inside the control circle carefully and have a good mental picture of this as you approach the control.