Moravian Orienteers

All club members are welcome to join us on Saturday evening, 11th January for our Annual Awards and Social Evening.  Please put this date in your diary!  We will be holding the event at Rafford Village Hall this year.  For those of you who haven’t visited Rafford before, the hall is just a couple of miles south of Forres (IV36 2RU, w3w ///rinsed.tester.blackbird).  Earlier in the day we will be holding a local event at Oakenhead Woods near Lossiemouth - see Events diary for further information.

The Awards evening will start formally at 6.00 pm, with doors open from 5.30 pm. We are planning a full evening with our awards presentations, a family-friendly quiz and some other activities to be announced nearer the time.  During the evening we will have our usual bring-and-share meal.  The evening will end at around 9.00 pm.  This is a great chance to meet other members of the club in a relaxed setting. 

We will be offering a main course of either meat or veggie chilli, served with baked potatoes or tacos. Please bring your own sharing contribution to accompany this main meal, which could a salad or a dessert.  If would help if you can contact our Chair, Rob Parkinson (chair@mor.scot), to let him know what you plan to bring.  Also, you are encouraged to bring your own cold drinks - we will provide tea and coffee. 

We look forward to seeing you all on Saturday evening, 11th January!

The club recently submitted a summary report to the Orienteering Foundation and Scottish Orienteering, covering the first phase of our Development Officer's project work.  We are grateful to both the OF and SOA for funding of this project. Will Hall has helped the club to strengthen it's membership base and increase attendance at local events.  You can read the report here. We hope to extend Will's contract by a further 12 months, subject to securing funding.  The second phase of the project will focus on developing good existing practice across a wider range of settings, and establishing a more sustainable model for member engagement and wider membership recruitment across Moray.

After the final YourOMaps Northern Urban League (NUL) event of 2024 at Lochardil, the final league table can be found here. Many congratulations to everyone who took part.  Also, a big well done to all of our Moravian podium winners.  So, well done Scarlett, Lorraine, Andrew and Colin.  Look out for NUL 2025 which should return next year.

Copies of the minutes of our August AGM, the revised constitution and the updated Club committee can now be found on the Governance page. Thank you to everyone who attended the AGM, and particularly to those who have offered to fill essential roles on the committee.  Please support our committee whenever you can - we are all volunteers who love orienteering, and want to share the fun that the sport gives us all!

We had another enjoyable informal MTBO event at Sluie on last Saturday - thanks once again to Steve for organising and James Stewart for planning the event.  The event was enjoyed by all, including family groups on the short course. Results are available here.  After the ride we were able to enjoy scones and coffee!  Thanks to David R, Denise and Penelope.  The next event in this mini-series is at the Carse of Ardesier on Saturday 14th September - contact Steve (mormtbo(at)gmail.com) for further details.

Two new permanent orienteering courses are now available to try at Brodie Castle,
courtesy of the National Trust for Scotland.  The courses are aimed at those new to orienteering, particularly youngsters and family groups. See the Getting Started: Permanent Courses page for further information.

It is with sad news that Moravian has learnt of the death of Derek McNeil in his 82nd year. Derek was a stalwart of the Club and British Orienteering over many decades. With a BOF membership ID of 1091, he was a very early member of British Orienteering and had remained an active member and participant of Moravian right up to last year. He was a regular at Moravian events and, in recent years, was often seen accompanied by his daughter, Katy.  He was always a willing volunteer, both at events and on the Committee, and approached everything with a smile and friendly word. He will be sadly missed by the Club. Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family and friends.

The 2024 Northern Orienteering Urban League is 'up and running' with three events of the five completed so far. Moravians hosted the third event in Forres on 19th June.  Michael planned two great courses, and Andrew organised the event.  The league table after three events is linked here.  Andrew leads on the Long course, closely followed by Colin in 2nd place. Fran Britain is the best placed Moravian on the Short course, in 8th place.

Entries for our next event in Elgin on Wednesday, 3rd July are now open. Pre-entries close at midnight on Sunday 30th June.   The link to enter either or both of the remaining the events is here: SiEntries - YourOMaps Northern Orienteering Urban League.

Try out the updated permanent orienteering courses at Quarry Wood, Elgin.  Choose from Yellow, Orange or Light Green courses. Or maybe use the all controls map to design your own training run! Visit our Permanent Orienteering page for more information. Courses start and finish at Leggat Car Park, at the western end of Quarry Wood. Thanks to Forestry and Land Scotland for their support for this initiative.

News from The JK Easter Event 
There was plenty of excitement (and mud!) generated over the four day event by the 15 Moravians who travelled down to the Midlands. 
You can see all the results from this page.

Here is a summary from Eddie

15 Moravians made the long treck to the English Midlands for the JK Trophy, considered Britain’s foremost annual event. We returned with great results far above our size. Indeed the Scots in general came away with a huge tally of medals despite the terrain being totally alien to anything we have here.

The sprint event was a very interesting University at Loughborough. Not overly difficult, but consistently requiring concentration, a bit like Sin City in Lossiemouth. It was far too much for my brain.

Our Chairman Andrew however had a stormer. After a massive collision knee to knee collision with an elite guy coming round a bend the other way, he picked himself up and won the bronze, just 8 seconds off gold – he would clearly have won without the collision.. By prizegiving time he was unable to walk.

Isobel won the first of her 3 silvers of the weekend in W20E

Day 2 was a middle race and day 3 a long one, with the 2 days adding together for the overall trophy.