Tag: 2026

Following on from the successful WEST Area Scottish Championships weekend, St Andrew’s Orienteering Club of Glasgow (STAG) treated us all to the combination of the Scottish Sprint Championship and the 3rd event of 2026 Scottish Orienteering Urban League calendar based in the classic urban challenge of Cumbernauld.

The Bank Holiday weekend in May saw the West Area Clubs (AYROC, CLYDE, ECKO, FVO, SOLWAY, STAG and Tinto) pull together to deliver the Scottish Championships Individual and Relay Championships with Terry O’Brien BEM (STAG) co-ordinating the weekend. Grandtully in Perthshire provided a stunning arena and access to two distinct terrain types – open sloping runnable birch woodlands and plantation forest. With representation from every club there was chatter, socialising, junior entertainment, plenty of cake to replenish post run and always importantly great planning with seamless organisation!

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).

We tend to all have our aims when we enter events – we can’t all win, but often have aims like beating a clubmate or rival, finishing in less than a certain time, doing better than last time or simply just having fun in the outdoors. Preparing before the event and looking at how you performed after the event can help you to take stock and make it easier to reach goals in the future.

Scottish Orienteering are offering 2 free workshops to support participants attending the Scottish Orienteering Championships.  The first will be held before the event to help you prepare  and the second after the event to help you to objectively analyse how you performed.

Over the past few years the SOA has organised a Club Networking Day with the aim to provide the opportunity for clubs to come together and exchange ideas.

This year we are responding to feedback and holding two events – one in the north and one in the south – to make the events more accessible:
● Saturday 12th September – Dunblane (Braeport Centre)
● Saturday 19th September – Boat of Garten (Community Hall)

April’s Community Conversation had a theme of marketing and outreach to newcomers. SOA comms & marketing Director, Katherine Ivory, started the session off with an overview of three practical tools that are being used to promote orienteering to wider audiences, leading into discussion about the new SOA leaflet for newcomers.

Event Publicity and Planning for Success

Communications work never stops, with continuous needs around sharing information and encouraging interest. Given the limited resources for this within the volunteer-driven orienteering community, what can help make things as efficient and effective as possible?

Congratulations to Morag McLuckie (Moravian Orienteering Club) and Katja Neumann (MAR Orienteering Club) who have both successfully completed the Scottish Certification in Coaching Orienteering (SCCO) Lead Coach qualification. They are the first candidates to successfully complete this new course which is the advanced level of the Scottish Orienteering Coach Education Pathway. Both agree that it was an incredibly valuable and rewarding experience, if a little demanding! We are delighted to have them as part of the Scottish Orienteering team of coaches and look forward to hearing more about their coaching experiences.

Massive congratulations to the Scottish orienteering community for coming together to host a hugely successful JK over the Easter weekend.  

With all the complications of a closed road event in Perth city centre on a bank holiday, followed by the stunning but challenging locations of Rannoch Forest and Tullochroisk on successive days.  The many months of preparation by our Planners, Controllers and Organisers were put to the test in the most demanding of circumstances as Storm Dave blew in bringing rain, hail and snow.  

Fifty years ago in 1976 Scotland held the first British World Orienteering Championships in Morayshire. Almost to the day half a century later the first British World Masters Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships is to take place in some of the same beautiful terrain used in 1976. (Mountain Bike Orienteering is referred to by the acronym MTBO). With entries now open and there are other many ways to get involved – keep reading to find out more…

Scottish clubs won four titles, including both Elite races in the 2026 Jan Kjellstrom Relay at Tullochroisk, near Kinloch Rannoch.

It was a big day for the students of Edinburgh University, who hold both Trophies for the first time in their long history at the same time, but not without a serious challenge from fellow-Scots. James Hammond, Charlie Rennie and Euan Tryner captured the big prize for the students, although silver medallists INT (Alistair Masson, Aidan Smith and Luke Fisher) had the quickest times on two of the three legs. EUOC were home in 92.15, with INT a close 2^nd (92.49).