Moravian Orienteers

BACKGROUND  The Scottish 6 Days will be hosted by Moravian Orienteers in 2023 (July 30th – August 4th ) and although we are a fairly small club we will, as usual, rise to the occasion.

This bi-annual orienteering festival attracts orienteers from all over the UK and beyond; we already have entries from Scandinavia, Australia, USA and New Zealand. There will be courses for everyone: toddlers dashing round a String Course; all junior and senior age classes (M/W 10 – 80+) as well as Colour Coded from White to Green.

All the information you need to pre-enter and get excited about being part of this great event is available on the Moray 2023 website, which will be regularly updated as more details are finalised.

https://scottish6days.com/

ENTRIES   Entries are managed via Fabian4 and as well as entering the orienteering events, there is merchandise available to pre-order: specially designed Moray 2023 O tops, hoodies, t-shirts, buff and even a 'gymsac' to hold your O kit.  

Whether this will be your first  - or twenty-first  - experience of a high-quality multi-day orienteering you won't be disappointed. Very early bird rates apply until January 31st 2023 and rise steadily after that.

Well we had an excellent event planned by Steve Smirthwaite and organised by Nikki Howard. Early runners only got hailed on, later runners got snow, which made visibility quite poor. The results are on our results page and the NNC league results can be found here:

https://munroleagues.com/leagues/Northern Night Cup 22-23

Next event is by INVOC see their website for details or SI entries are open SI Entries

The Scottish Regional heat of the CompassSport Cup 2023 will be held on Sunday, 12th February at Faskally near Pitlochry. The event is being organised this year by STAG. As this year, we have entered the Trophy competition for smaller clubs (less than 120 eligible BOF members) and hope to put out a strong team so we can do as well if not better than this year. So please put the date in your diary - it is a great opportunity to run as a club team, and compete with other Scottish clubs. We will circulate further information in due course - a call for entries will come out via the Newsletter, and be posted here.
Rob

Huge congratulations to all the Moravians who represented the club at the Compass Sport Cup final on Sunday 16th October. This is a national competition, with clubs from all over the country competing. It's not often that the final is held in Scotland, so we were keen to make a good showing - and we did! The event was held at Devilla Forest near Kincardine; a very physical  and technical area, and careful navigation was required. As a smaller club we were part of the Trophy competition as opposed to the Cup competition for larger clubs.There were some strong performances from Moravian runners across a range of age classes that saw us move up one place from last year to 3rd position, behind Interlopers (based in Edinburgh) and MAROC (based on Deeside).  There was a great team atmosphere at the club tent, with everyone enjoying the sunny weather at the event. Well done and thank you everyone who ran! The photo opposite features some of the team who ran - apologies if you were not around when the photo was taken. You can see all the individual results here and the Club results here.

Rob Parkinson

Junior Inter Regional Championships Northern Ireland
Well done to all those Scottish Juniors who are bringing home the 2022 Junior Inter Regional Championship Trophy. After lying a close second behind Yorkshire after the individual event, their relay teams pulled together to get a first and second team in the boys' relays and first in the girls' relays - well done - a great result!!! And a big thank you to all the coaches and travelling support who made the visit possible. A special well done from us to Kate, Finlay and Michael.

First Aid Course - news from Ian Addis
There is a first aid course to be held on 4th. Nov at Fochabers, which will be presented by Jane Hay.  If you are interested in attending, please let me know at the email below. 

Also of interest, BASOC are looking for a first aider for the JHI/SOL 6 event on October 9th from noon onwards.
If you are qualified and can help out, please get in contact with me.  If running, you would need to start between 9.30 and 9.50.  I will pass the information on.  

Next MOR event
Entries are now open for our next event on Saturday 24th September in Elgin. This a SOUL (Scottish Orienteering Urban League Event) so we are expecting orienteers from all over Scotland who are coming up for the weekend- there is an INVOC SOL event in Anagach Woods the following day. We look forward to seeing you in Elgin on 24th! Entries for the event in Anagach are also now open.

Morag and Liz would like to hear from you if you are able to help on the day. Please can you email Morag,(moragmcluckie "at" yahoo.co.uk) even if you put your name on the list at the AGM!!

Junior Team Selections for the Junior inter-regionals and Junior Home Internationals

The Compass Sport Cup final this year is being held on Sunday 16th October at Tulliallan, Kincardine, between Stirling and Dunfermline. The event is being organised by Forth Valley Orienteers, who are also putting on an urban event in Stirling the previous day, so if you want you can make a weekend of it. We have qualified for the final following a great performance at the regional event in Callander Woods earlier in the year. We will be competing in the Compass Sport Trophy for smaller clubs, with our 13 best scores to count. This is an opportunity for the club to make a strong showing, as the event is not often held in Scotland. Everyone can make a contribution, and it is a great fun to participate as a club.   

Please email me (club (at) mor.scot) to confirm your availability for this event. Entries will be collated centrally by me on behalf of the club, and the club makes a contribution towards event fees.  Event details will be available on the FVO web pages in due course (www.fvo.org.uk). Meanwhile, put the date in your diary!

Rob Parkinson

On Saturday 20th August over fifty orienteers gathered on Findhorn beach for the Moravian Club Championships, including members of both local and more far flung clubs. The sky was blue and spirits high as the orienteers gathered. Both new members and old enjoyed a good catch up after the summer break, there was a strong club atmosphere.

The club championship was slightly different then your usual orienteering course, it was a score event.Meaning instead of a set route the map had all the controls on the map with different values depending on difficulty, this meant it was up to each individual orienteer to choose their way around the scenic sights of Findhorn collecting controls as they went. There were two different age categories: the open for anyone in which you had 45 minutes to gather your controls; and the juniors for under fourteen who had 30 minutes. The bonus to score results is that it does not matter about experience as each person was fairly handicapped to even the playing field. Congratulations to our open course winner Alan Halliday and our Junior winner Sophie Howard. Our thanks go to the planner Ian Addis and organiser Ken Anderson for setting up and running the event.

After the courses had finished and the club AGM started. We looked into the highs and lows of last year celebrating success through out the juniors. With British camps and international camps, the successful juniors all came from the bottom working their way through the inclusive courses for each ability and the support of Moravian to be some of the best in Great Britain.

Entries are now open via the SI Entries link.

Junior Inter-Area weekend 3rd/4th September
Calling all Moravian Juniors…
This year’s Scottish Junior Inter-Area weekend will take place in early September in Pitlochry.  Juniors from the three Scottish regions (East, North and West) come together to compete in friendly rivalry with a relay event on the Saturday, an overnight stay with food and entertainment followed by an individual event on the Sunday. For further details see scottish-orienteering.org/news. Pippa Weir will be sending out an email to juniors in the next couple of days.  Please reply or contact her (phweir(@)btinternet.com) if you are interested in participating in this year’s event. 

Coast and Islands report