On Thursday June 5, Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline welcomed pupils from all across Scotland, hosting the much-anticipated Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival. This year’s event was a resounding success, bringing together almost 400 enthusiastic pupils to showcase their navigational skills, sportsmanship and teamwork.

It has been an exciting weekend for the Scottish University orienteering clubs as the Scottish Student Championships were held for the first time in three years. The 2022 event was of particular significance as it was the first Scottish Student Orienteering Championships to be affiliated with Scottish Student Sport in 10 years. Six Universities took part in the event: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Strathclyde and Durham as a guest University. The event was sponsored by Durty Events who provided the championships with a new trophy for the overall winning university 

Last weekend ScotJOS gathered in Aberfoyle for their first camp of the 2022/23 session. Despite the
rain of last week, the weather brightened and the juniors enjoyed some very technical training.

Beautiful weather, a stunning race arena and some of the best orienteering terrain in Scotland.  Today’s event near St Fillans had it all, with the added attraction of a World Ranking Event Middle Distance race (and Middle Distance for us all which was a welcome relief after two tough days).

The June session in the SOA’s monthly online Community Conversations series focused on supporting inclusion and wellbeing. The session was introduced by Ken McDonald, the SOA’s Equality, Welfare and Diversity Director, followed by open discussion around aspects of inclusion that clubs and SOA might now focus on.

Ken set the scene by outlining what we mean by inclusion and what Scottish Orienteering wants to achieve. Key to this is developing an understanding of the barriers different people may face and proactively addressing these to maximise access, increase participation across the board, and drive wider benefits around the sustainability of our sport and positive experiences for everyone. Inclusivity is part of the bedrock of the Sport for Life strategy of sportscotland (our major funder), to support a more active Scotland and public health goals as well as Scottish sporting performance.

Over the past 8 weeks, with a break over Christmas, Scottish Orienteering development team with the support of local volunteers have been running a series of events called Orienteering Edinburgh at Festival Square. Orienteering Edinburgh is aimed at newcomers and uses MapRun over SI Punching for simplicity and accessibility benefits. Events have taken place at the same time and place each week. As of February 15th, the event moved to the Meadows with the aim of attracting a new audience and providing a new challenge for our regular participants.

Recently, in the last couple of weeks, we have seen our participation numbers begin to grow. Those who have attended since the start have begun to join clubs, enter local events and encourage their friends along.

Well there hasn’t been a damp Jamie Stevenson Trophy for a few years but a bit of rain did not diminish the chatter, shouts of encouragement and enthusiasm for the event.

The Jamie Stevenson Trophy is an annual inter-club competition for junior classes only, and traditionally held in central Scotland to encourage participation from all Scottish clubs. It was initiated as a fund-raising event for the Scottish Junior Orienteering Squad (ScotJOS) by Bill and Anne Stevenson in honour of their son, Jamie, who is a multiple World Championships medal winner ( winning gold at the World Orienteering Championships in the Sprint in 2003) and also one of our Patrons. It’s a chance for all juniors in a club to take part in a competitive event with a parade of athletes, commentary and prize-giving.

This year 11 clubs ventured to the Hermitage, just outside Dunkeld, to join to let their juniors enjoy a taste of a competition focussed on juniors with a celebratory atmosphere. Club tents line the run in, faces are adored with face paints and club mascots on are display. No club has yet challenged the Blue Peter skills of Inverness Orienteering Club who have created a cardboard eagle costume in the last few years. Will we get a Wallace Monument costume from Forth Valley Orienteers, a capercaillie from Mar Orienteering Club or a Burghead Bull from Moravian Orienteers to name but a few next year?

As is tradition the day started with a parade of all the juniors led by last year’s winning club Forth Valley Orienteers. It also helped this year to ensure the run in was suitably trampled to make their final run in easier!

More than 100 juniors from all over Scotland converged on Deeside for the annual Scottish Junior Inter Areas, on the weekend of November 9th & 10th. Teams from the North, East and West battled it out over a weekend of competition and fun with relays on the Saturday and individual races on the Sunday.

Thank you to BASOC and GRAMP  for their stellar work in hosting the recent Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) events which provided very different areas to test our skills. Results can be found on the Scottish Orienteering League page

Dunachton (BASOC)

This area provided a lovely mix of birch woodland, grazed farm land and open moorland with areas of intricate contour detail, crags and boulders, dense juniper and ruins to test our concentration.  Despite being the weekend after the JK the organization was seamless. Thank you to the Organiser Janette MacLeod, Planner Jane Chisholm and Controller David Esson (GRAMP).

So here it is – the map challenge – as part of the Jamie Stevenson Alternative.