Harvester Results

• Harvester results
• Winsplits (external website)
• Splitsbrowser (external website)
• Discuss the Harvester Relays on the Nopesport.com forums (external website)

SOL 5 Results

• Results by class
• Results by course
• Split times
• BOF Rankings page (external website)
• Badge times
• Winsplits link (external website)
• Splitsbrowser link (external website)

Lost Property

A number of items were found during the weekend:

• Karrimor thermal top (size medium)
• thumb compass
• a blue “Energyquest” baseball cap
• a small hand torch
• a GAP hooded top (grey, size M)
• small “Lifeventure” bag containing shower gel and water purification tablets

If you think any of these items might be yours, please contact the organiser Robin sloan on 01896 822548 or by email to robin_sloan@roseisle.demon.co.uk.

Official Comments

Organiser’s Comments

Farms in the upper Teviot valley usually raise hill sheep and pedigree cattle, but Bowanhill Farm has diversified to produce a crop of elite orienteers. James and Douglas Tullie are both in the British team for the Junior World Championships in Lithuania in a few weeks and John has been a regular in the Scottish Veteran men’s team. Competitors from last weekend who experienced the terrain at Teviothead will perhaps understand why.

Organising a combined Scottish O League race with the Harvester Relays the night before was always going to be a big task, but as organiser my job was made a lot easier for several reasons. Firstly, having the two planners living on the area made a lot of difficult issues easy. Assembly field entrance wet and boggy? – John organised some hard core. Power supply for the computers? – neighbour will supply a cable from nearby shed. Need a hall for registration? – Caroline is on the Hall committee. Marquees for the changeover? – Teviothead Show Committee has some to lend. Need a camping field? – there’s one available next to the farm. And so on.

Secondly, Lindsey Knox running the SI system on Sunday and Michael Napier with his own Harvester software provided all the necessary computing services. Michael has developed a programme that eases a lot of aspects of organising a relay and gave competitors the real-time situation at two controls. With that and the view from the spectator control, even at night, Orienteering can sometimes become a spectator sport. The Club website has been set up and maintained by Martin Sloan, and provided an essential and accessible information link.

Thirdly, I had offers of help from many non-RR orienteers. Paul Frost (ECHO), Robin Orr (Clyde) and Bill Stevenson (ESOC) did night shifts at changeover, Donald and Lucile Macleod (FVO) helped with registration and parking for both events and Trina Rogerson (ELO) and the Coombs family (MAROC) provided vital support for the SOL starts. Elise Ross, who has nothing to do with orienteering, kindly brought her A & E skills to provide first aid cover overnight. The Roxburgh Reivers faithful can always be relied upon to do whatever is asked of them, and more. Everyone was uncomplaining, although some jobs turned out to be more demanding than expected!

My sincere thanks go to all of the above and to Andy Lewsley, the controller, for his helpful input to organisational matters.

From the positive feedback received in the last week – for which thanks from us all – it seems that you, the competitors, enjoyed the weekend. The main fly in the ointment on Saturday evening was a small one called culicoides impunctatus, the plague of midges being as unexpected as they were unpleasant. As such a small insect caused so much discomfort, we hope this was counterbalanced by a small Club – Roxburgh Reivers – providing good competition for so many of you. Thanks for coming.

Robin Sloan (Organiser, RR)

Planner’s Comments

Donald Petrie asked me why we hadn’t mapped this area sooner. To me, having lived here all my life, (my family has farmed here since 1870!), and knowing the place “like the back of my hand” it didn’t seem detailed enough to offer a decent orienteering challenge. I was persuaded otherwise and since we don’t have a surplus of good areas in the Scottish Borders we booked Teviothead for an SOL. I had always thought that it would make a better night event area so when the opportunity of the Harvester came along I jumped at the chance. The rest of the club took a little more persuasion; we only have 20 senior and 8 junior members and a SOL on its own is a big undertaking.

I planned most of the Harvester courses and shared the SOL planning with James (with contributions from Douglas and Andrew). We are still arguing over exactly who planned which course! Although I compete fairly regularly in night events like the Tinto Twin, it is 10 years since I last attempted a Harvester (Dipton ‘96) and I have never planned a night event before (Fools rush in ….). I therefore asked one or two people for advice. Someone suggested that I shouldn’t make the Harvester too technically difficult but Big Jon Musgrave thought I should go for full TD 5. I took Jon’s advice, for the longer courses at least, but tried to use control sites which I felt were “fair” at night and which had reasonable catching features. I started to realise that perhaps the area did offer a decent challenge when I ran one of the night courses and made several mistakes!

Looking at the results from Harvester 2005 it was obvious from the controls used that there was a lot of similarity between the courses. Once I had settled on an assembly area, start, finish and spectator control the courses all had the same basic shape with bigger and bigger loops added on to give the desired distance. The spectator control worked even better than I had envisaged and I was back up there at 2.30 a.m. watching lights bobbing about on the hillside when I should have been in bed! I wasn’t alone!

In many ways the SOL courses were more difficult to plan. Firstly the lack of tracks and paths meant that we had to use fences, walls and ditches as the line features on courses 1 & 2. We ended up with two starts so that the more technical courses got straight into the best bit of the area and two finishes so that the longer courses didn’t have too much repetition. Teviothead isn’t blessed with an excess of good control sites so we inevitably used several on the SOL which had been used the night before but where possible from different directions. I hope this didn’t detract from your enjoyment. In fact I spoke to one person who made a mistake at the same control both at night and during the day. In open areas I don’t like legs where the flag is visible from a long way off so I tried where possible to have legs which used the shape of the ground to “hide” control sites.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to my “back yard” and I have to admit that, judging by your comments, Teviothead does offer a decent orienteering challenge although possibly more so in the dark.

John Tullie (Planner, RR)

Controller’s Comments

My thanks to John and the rest of the Tullie clan for making this a very straight forward event to control. Thanks also to Robin and his band of merry men (and women) for making the organizational side run so smoothly. A Churchillian phrase comes to mind when RR put on an event of this size with so few members. The only slight problem arose as the first leg runners finished and we found out that one of the two finish boxes had been programmed with a wrong code. Thanks to Michael Napier who ‘sorted the problem’ within 5 mins.

The comments I heard suggest that you enjoyed running on this new area and found it challenging (particularly in the dark), I certainly think it is a good area and John and James made good use of it – they were concerned that it was ‘a bit easy’ . I don’t think so.

I enjoyed watching the Harvester, the view from the spectator control was excellent (particularly when you knew where people were trying to get to), seeing 4 stationary lights all equidistant from a control was memorable.

The SOL results suggested that one or two people were still very tired from the night before but also that others have amazing powers of recovery, well done.

Andy Lewsley (Controller, Border Liners)