Taking time out from his studenty studiousness, Tim ran M20 for Scotland at the Senior Home Internationals 23rd/24th Sept at Craig a Barns and Errochty.
Scotland won pretty much everything in sight, finishing with a total of 55 points against 44 for England, 28 Cymru and 22 for Ireland. Tim got to rub shoulders with the big boys and ran with Oleg Chepelin (ex-GRAMP) and James Tullie for the Relay but I can’t find him in the Individual results so I’m wondering if Calum McLeod had to be called off the bench? If anyone knows, please tell us…
There was success last weekend in the emerald isle for a team from Gramp in the Mourne Mountain Marathon. Experienced MM’ers Sean O’Sullivan and Rob Hickling teamed up to run their first Mourne, which is renowned as a small, friendly and relaxed event. After a good first day, they were third overnight on the B class, 20 minutes down on the leaders. Then on Sunday, Sean and Rob had the fastest time of the day and took the overall class win by 5 minutes. The splits on Sunday make interesting reading, as some of the other top teams made significant navigational errors and lost quite a lot of time – perhaps because they do less orienteering! The times and splits are at:
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Final Rankings by Age Class here. And weighted for Junior/Senior/Vet categories here.
And in Excel format with all the counting scores from each event if you want to analyse your performance further (is it better to target events like Pannanich where you think there’s more chance of hoovering up points?)
The Champs are run over 10 nominated events with the best 5 scores counting for each runner.
Within each event, the Gramp member who is highest placed for each course scores the maximum course points:
White 200, Yellow 400, Orange 800, Red 1200, Light Green 1600, Green 2000, Blue 2800, Brown 4000.
Points for subsequent runners are calculated using this formula: score = [(winner’s time)/(runner’s time)]*(maximum course points)
Men and Women’s Junior, Senior and Veteran divisions are used to decide Championship positions and individual totals are modified to try and make competition within these divisions as fair as possible:
M/W10 +100% of total, M/W12 +50%, M/W14 +32%, M/W16 +24%, M/W18 +16%, M/W20 +8%, M/W21to M/W40 +0%, M/W45 +5%, M/W50 +15%, M/W55 +25%, M/W60 +40%, M/W65 +60%, M/W70 +80%, M/W75 and over +100%
Another great little series again this year thanks to good planning and enthusiastic competitors with some very keen competition at the top of the league between various M18/M20/M21s and one or two older Ms with youthful legs. Calum McLeod and Naomi Lang had the Junior side sewn up and Carolyn McLeod met her match in newcomer to the sport if not the area, Ruth Crewe (Cosmics).
As well as the GRAMP Urban stalwarts we also had several incomers join the league half way through (studying or working in the area this year) and if they had been able to attend more events then the leader board would probably look vastly different. Unfortunately we can’t really delay the start of the Urban Series to accommodate Uni term time as it’s already pretty dark by 7pm even early October and we run the risk of becoming an Urban Night League (although I bet we’d get lots of takers for that anyway as everyone seems to enjoy it so much – even those who aren’t uber-competitive and laugh the whole way round (you know who you are, Blaggers!!)).
*Five people didn’t punch control no.9 (E thicket, inside west part). It was well described and I think they didn’t look in quite the right place. Their split times show that they did search around a bit! The results don’t show them as mispunched as we’re feeling generous…
Westburn Park was done as map memory as it’s such a small area. Unfortunately the long legs were cropped so that it wasn’t obvious there are entrances to the Victoria Park side at east and west ends and a lot of folk were seen legging it over the uncrossable walls and fences on either side of the main road. Do you know the difference in the symbols and why they’re marked as such? How can we spread the word to newcomers to urban O?
On a warm day at Crathes, over 135 people enjoyed running Nick Hale’s courses, carefully controlled by Steve Spencer with our thanks. Well done for getting out and doing some sport, not just watching the Olympics on the box! Appreciation to organiser Adrian Will and timing team Jayne MacGregor and Ian Hamilton, plus all the other Gramp helpers. We hope you enjoyed the refreshments in the Crathes tea-room afterwards. Routegadget and Winsplits are now loaded up.
Scotland have won the Junior Inter Regional Championships down in Norfolk. Well done guys!
The organising club, NOR, has full results showing Sasha as M16 Champion and Katrina in 7th place W18. (Think they may be the only two representatives from GRAMP this time?) Try checking the NOR website for more info.
Just wanted to send a huge WELL DONE to all the GJOs who ran this weekend. I was very proud of your team spirit and enthusiasm you showed today. Everyone ran well in an area which had a very intricate path network. We had a great overall result coming in 4th position and a few excellent individual results. Well done to Sasha , our medal winner in second place and to Struan, Paul, Calum and Katrina who just missed out on podium positions coming in 4th on their respective courses. Also a special mention for our youngest competitor – Duncan who tackled a very tricky yellow course. I hope you all agree that it was a great day out even although the sun didn’t shine. You can see the full results on the SOA website.
Also many thanks to all the adults for your help and support: David, Bill, Adrian, Iain and Evgueni for driving the minibus.
Hope to have some photos here on the website in the next few days.
Keep up the orienteering over the summer and look out for more junior training events in the autumn.
Obviously Rob has to be unbiased when reporting these things, but I don’t 😉 so congratulations to GRAMPs Dave Armitage on 2nd place in the M60 Individual course and helping his Relay Team to a good start with 4th place on the first leg.
Have a quick look at the top few teams on this year’s LAMM C course and see how many GRAMP (and MAROC) names you can spot. We have Ian Hamilton+ Alec Erskine in 8th, Alistair + Rosalyn Marshall in 6th, Gordon Urquart + Douglas Cowan in 5th and right at the top of the list are Tim + Jack Gomersall winning by a comfortable 12 minute margin – congratulations lads! (Is the Tom Gomersall on the A course their cousin I wonder?) Also well done to Dave + Liz Kirk for wading in at the relatively deep end on the C course for their first LAMM and surviving and also Gillian Clunas + Elaine Stewart on coming 1st Female Vet, 7th Vets overall and 41st overall on Gillian’s first LAMM too.
Speaking of the A course, Gareth Yardley and partner Dave Thompson also did extremely well coming in as 2nd Vets and 7th overall. Gareth is even pictured on the LAMM website in a photo entitled “The pointless task of trying to get midges out of your tea” but if you look very carefully, the midge in question appears to be the size of a small dog!!?
Last – well actually first Vets – but not least are Dave + Sonia Armitage who came 4th on the D course and look well pleased with their hard-earned prizes (photo by John Brooke).
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, other GRAMPs were helping out at WTOC 2012 and some were also bending their brains instead of their legs in the Public Class.
Foss (current BOF ranking 2232) warmed up with some TempO on Wednesday before having a stormer on Day 1 at Tentsmuir coming 7th overall beating both Nick Barrable (44) and Sarah-Jane Gaffney (714). Now there’s a result you wouldn’t predict and Foss must be dead chuffed!
The international field of competitors appreciated the warm Scottish hospitality even if the weather was dreich – maybe Neil will explain what the joke was about in the next Telegramp?
If you’ve time on your hands at the end of the month, Latvia is the next stop on the international Trail O scene. The Kapa 12 bulletin will tell you more.
Visit the GRAMP Routegadget site to enter your routes for the Scottish Relays, and compare your gaffles, routes and splits with others on the same course!
6/6/12 Message from the Organisers:
Firstly, thanks go to Nicholas Barber of CLOK who interrupted his first leg run to help Steve Feltbower of FVO who suffered an injury on the far side of the map but still managed to limp a fair way home before our rescue team caught up with him.
Secondly, apologies for the download queue caused by networking problems but most of you seemed to find it quite a sociable wait as there was much chatting and comparing of routes going on. With no network we couldn’t make any changes until the download deluge slowed to a trickle so thanks also for your patience in waiting for name changes and mp checks/reinstatements to show in the printed results.
Thirdly, another big thanks to all our GRAMP helpers, MOR for doing the car parking (although by their own admission the biggest problem was making sure cars avoided the lapwing nests) and Lucy Fryer of AROS who volunteered ages ago as she wanted to learn a bit more about Emit and OS2003 relay software and ended up doing a fantastic job all day on download for us.
The third event in the Jubilee Five festival of orienteering in Royal Deeside was the mountain bike orieteering competition, held in Scolty and Blackhall Forest, south of the River Dee near Banchory.
Conditions were as near as perfect as you could ask for – dry trails (mostly…though John Mason managed to fin a wet ditch to fall into!), blue skies, fluffy white clouds, nice sunshine, cool temperatures (14C). Fifty-nine riders spread across three courses showed us how mountain biking should be done. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves whilst discovering that Scolty and Blackhall are particularly well blessed with those brown line things called contours. This makes route choice on a MTB much more interesting.
My thanks to Planner (Richard Oxlade), Controller (Sarah Dunn) and my helpers Duncan Grassie, Josh Dudley and Rachel Scott.
RH
(For anyone still wondering about the non-competitive nature of this event, the Forestry Commission were concerned for the safety of other forest users on a busy (for Scolty) Bank Holiday so granted permission for our event providing the urge to speed recklessly was removed by making it an event rather than a race.)
Following correction of names and checking times and punching, here is an updated set of results (by class) and splits (by course) that you can download.
It was a large event with 500 runners. Congratulations to all who took part, and thanks to all the Gramp helpers and friends who helped run it so successfully.
BOF results loaded but for some reason not picking up non-comps. Will correct after Jubilee 5 and hols.
Another scorcher! 27 degrees this time – too hot for Rachels and a few others judging by the results. Was glad to reach the relative cool of the coast as it was a mere 17 degrees in Stoney.
Thanks to Helen for a cracking first crack at planning a “proper” event (I was enjoying it until my head boiled over at number 17!) and Evgueni for organising. Also to all helpers including Tessa Campbell of MAROC who wasn’t afraid to tell Mark Nixon to try not to win the Green in too fast a time as it would stymie son Iain’s chances of getting Gold Standard – again!
Bit of a conundrum this – Mark is using our events to train for Middle Distance and we’re happy to assist in any way we can but it obviously has unforeseen consequences. Answers on a postcard please (but not to me!!)
Ticks: I’m up to 13 free range wrigglers now – anyone want to declare their tally for the Golden Tweezers?
I received an email from Jan Strandskog wondering whether anyone actively tries to stop ticks from settling rather than just pick them off after the event and, if so, what do they use? The only product he knows of is one sold in Europe called Centaur but as it’s rather expensive to buy online (after carriage and tax) he’s looking for anyone going to Europe to buy him a bottle from a chemists to bring back to try out. Leave a comment if you do use anything or are willing to be a mule for Jan.
Another great little series was wrapped up on Friday 25th May. GRAMP’s Sasha Chepelin M16 managed to finish 2nd thereby securing his title of 2012 Forest Sprint Winner, closely followed by Callum Roberts M18 and Josh Dudley M18 tying for 2nd which means Evgueni was forced into 4th in the end.
The youngsters also dominated the Women’s battle too with Frances Wright W18 taking first place, with Evelyn Mason W16 in second and GRAMP’s Katrina McLeod W18 in third. If Katrina had managed to make it to four events like the others who knows what the result may have been?
Thanks to all the organisers from both clubs for providing another chance to round off the working week with a therapeutic scamper round!
British Orienteering have announced selections to their Talent Camp, to be held at Badaguish Outdoor Centre this summer, and the list includes several SCOTJos names not least our own Sasha Chepelin for M16. Well done Sasha!
A big thankyou to all organiser/planners for braving baking sun/midges/downpours to put on this year’s series and also to Sean, Neil and Anne for officiating or keeping the scores in various ways.
Congratulations to all Award winners, but special mention must go to Ondrej Masek who took part in all 15 events. We think this must be an all-time record. Anyone who did not collect their certificate etc at Templars should contact Anne Hickling to pick them up. She will bring them to the autumn sprint events on the next few Wednesdays.
The Balmoral 15 mile race on Sunday was an invasion of orienteers. The route was Balmoral to Invercauld bridge and back via Glen Gelder and the lower slopes of Lochnagar (a few hills then). Robbie Siimspon sometime LAMM partner of Oleg Chepelin came first in 1.21, with Murray Strain and Oleg taking 2nd and 3rd. Carolyn McLeod was first Female Vet in 1.42. There were a few other orienteers in the pack including Sam G who finished in 2.01 as 9th Super Vet. The only drawback of the day with superb weather was having to miss the orienteering at Balnagowan. Oleg tried to pursuade Murray to dash across for a late entry at Balnagowan (since they were all done before 12:30), but they decided to hang around for prizegiving. Sam
Just back from the JK and trawling through the results the overall impression is quite a few 2nds for GRAMP, some good personal performances from some and two 1sts – congrats to Sasha and Tim Gomersall for adding to their silverware collection! Some pretty tough terrain out there, not helped by a lot of recent windblow, made for some long days for some of us with quite a few knocks and sprains (oh and don’t forget the evil nettle patch at the relays) but the brain cells also took a hammering as it was generally good technical, tricky stuff. Most of us came out of it still smiling (although maybe it was smiling at the prospect of the well-earned seconds of Easter Eggs?) and enjoyed it even if we weren’t bothering the podium people at all.
In no particular order:
2nd place for Helen Cromie in both the WOpen Sprint and W21S (living closer to the Scandi action must be paying off?), Sam Griffin M10B, Jack Gomersall M18L,Richard Oxlade M50S, Calum/Sasha/Jack Men’s Short Relay (10 minutes ahead of the ‘old men’ Doug/Nick/Dad!)
1st place for Sasha M16 Sprint and Tim Gomersall M20L
Hats off to the three brave orienteers who had a tilt at the Elite classes – Calum McLeod M18E 17th (and one MAROC scalp), Katrina McLeod W18E 15th (and two MAROC scalps!) and not quite last but enjoyed every energy-sapping minute of it Gordon Urquhart M21E 54th!
3rd place for Anne Hickling on W55S and she found time to help with the Trail O (and is still seeking helpers for WTOC2012 please BTW)
Well done too to the Junior Ws who did well considering their lack of experience of big events like the JK but kept it together on both days – Maya Reynard W10B 8th, Josie Gomersall W12B 5th and Chloe Raynard W14B 4th.
If you need more help then shout out to our Fixtures Team or someone on the committee and they will put you in touch with an experienced organiser.
*Although the docs above refer to Summer Series they apply equally to Forest Sprint, Urban Sprint, DNC and any other local events.
Urban Sprint organisers also need to be aware that juniors under 16 must be accompanied by an adult if running on roads with traffic – if courses are contained within a park then this rule does not apply.
DNC organisers also need to be aware that competitors must be Green or TD5 standard to run independently. If not then they can still compete if accompanied by an experienced TD5 orienteer.
Lost property: size 3F Clarks baby shoe, soft brown leather – contact us to claim
Phew! What a scorcher – the car dashboard showed 22 degrees as we drove away at 3pm so congrats to everyone for not succumbing to heat exhaustion although there may be one or two tingly noses this evening?
Thanks to Gen for giving us a twirl around different parts of the area for a change, the Austs for controlling and Jayne and her team for registration and computing as seamlessly as ever. Did you try a cake from Laura’s stall in aid of Guide Dogs for the Blind? Yummy! MAROC have got some serious competition there I reckon.
Congratulations to both Carolyn McLeod W45 and Sasha Chepelin M16 who won Scottish Sprint Champion status at St Andrews Uni Campus over the weekend. Katrina was also on the podium, 2nd equal in W18, having kept up the McLeod family tradition of racing each other over the same courses and beating Mum by 55 seconds.
Please accept the Planner’s apologies for the mix-up with the control descriptions on the Green course. The last minute change of venue forced some rather rapid planning and checking and somewhere along the line a previous version of the course was used to produce the loose control descriptions.
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It has been decided to void legs 2 (225 to 158), and 3 (158 to 139) on Green, and to reinstate anyone who went to 163 instead of 158. Once again, apologies to anyone affected.
Congratulations to all GJOs who took part in this year’s Jon Duncan Junior Deeside Cup and here are the Final Results. Usually, we present the trophies at the GRAMP and MAROC AGMs so if your name is on one then a special congratulations and GJOs please come to collect your trophy on Saturday 8th Dec.
The Jon Duncan Junior Deeside Cup is named after an honorary GRAMP and ex-British Team member, Jon Duncan, who is now enjoying semi-retirement from the international orienteering scene growing beetroot in Norway. (Honest!)
Team GRAMP came third in the CompassSport Cup competition today, 59 points behind arch rivals (and friends) MAROC who in turn lost to ESOC by a mere 11 points. Congratulations to ESOC who now go through to the final in September.
Thanks to everyone who heeded the clarion call and turned out for the club, especially Foss and Erik who got up at 5:30 this morning for the 284-mile round trip!
Well done to Felix Späth, a very recent new member, and Sasha for gaining the maximum points for their respective classes and all the other GRAMPs who backed them up (a full list and course results etc is available here) not least Keith Yardley and Lachlan Kirk who kept their heads and put in solid performances against the MAROC M14- runners. Some of us plodded too slowly to make a mark, others blew up mid-course, some picked up the wrong map and some just couldn’t make it on the day but even taking all that into account I still don’t think we could have matched ESOC’s performance had everything gone according to plan.
Thanks also to Evgueni for chauffering the minibus and accomodating Pete’s demands for a later departure so he could have a few more minutes in bed (Foss and Erik were not impressed by such lack of moral fibre) and also to the Gomersalls for providing top notch tea/cake/blethering venue after the event.
Telegramp has been mothballed indefinitely. In the meantime, feel free to send adverts for/reports on events, thoughts/opinions, photos, big birthdays or other things to celebrate to Rachel to put on the web instead webmaster@grampoc.com or to Sally Lindsay for Score (contact her via the SOA website). Ta in advance!
Click here to jump through to the DNC blog to see who won what lavish prizes for the 2011/12 DNC and the overall results. Most nights saw frantic competition in relatively mild conditions compared to last year’s snowy epics – (although I think some folk secretly miss the buzz of floundering through deep drifts with their torchlight bouncing off and their breath hanging in illuminated clouds in front of their face – atmospheric yes but rubbish for trying to navigate and run quickly!)
Congratulations to all our 2011 Champs and especially to Naomi Lang (W12) and Mark Stockton (M21) who earned Most Improved Junior and Senior Awards respectively.
GRAMP Champs Final Rankings 2011 in pdf by age class and by weighting (to compare results across age classes)
The 2011 CHAMPS file in xls showing each event’s results in case you want to do some more analysis.
Congratulations to Ian H and Gen J on coming 2nd on the Long and Short courses respectively. The Langs and Barracloughs were also out in force on the Short course and Bob Daly was seen in racing mode on the Long trying to dash round on what little snow was left by the end of the afternoon before the Nordic Ski Club collected in the controls.
Here are the results – slightly different from what was announced on the day but as far as I can make out the only damage done is one or two folk gaining more chocolate than was really good for them. Thanks to Katrina and the rest of the McLeod clan for planning and hosting.
SplitsSimple results and notes. Glad to see Ewen practically did the Bike O section (as opposed to impractically which would presumably mean by unicycle?) but dismayed to see that Carolyn won the Short Bi-O course on foot alone!! (Although maybe she should be DSQed as she didn’t wear a helmet or have to figure out how to carry her Emit brikke and steer at the same time?)
Thanks to Dave and family for cheerfully manning a somewhat chilly registration/transition while the rest of us had great fun battling through ice-encrusted puddles and braving death-defying descents on our bikes before taking off on wobbly legs for the Foot O section where more than one experienced orienteer was caught out by the control on the top of a big crag. Dagnabbit!
Did you enjoy it? Should we try more Bike O events? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Well done to 3 GRAMPS who won Scottish Score Championship status at Stirling today (27/11/11) – Tim Griffin M45, Dave Armitage M60 and Katrina McLeod W18. Also to Sam Gomersall M50 who came second behind Martin Dean (which is as good as winning in my book as the area is Martin’s back yard!!) 😉
The ingenious trade-off between fast grass and tarmac around the University Campus coupled with the steeper rougher terrain to the north made it quite difficult to judge how long you thought you’d take in each area and to decide whether to do the Campus loop first with fresh legs or to leave it to last to stagger through on the way to the Finish. Another nice touch, that caught many folk out, was the inclusion of several of the highest scoring controls very close to the Start/Finish rather than in the furthest corners of the map as is often the case. Those that took a moment to read the instructions and map carefully before pegging off were rewarded with some unexpected easy hits – good for the confidence and ego!
Full results can be found on the FVO website.
Laura Smith, Isobel Anderson and Maya Reynard who packed out the top three places in W8 – looks so good when it says GRAMP, GRAMP, GRAMP!
Also Ailsa Anderson and Josie Gomersall for 1st and 2nd in W10, Naomi Lang and Kate Wilkinson 3rd in W12 and W14 respectively. The boys struggled a bit this year but well done to Patrick Lang, Keith Yardley and Jack Gomersall who all came 3rd in M8, M12 and M16 respectively and Sasha Chepelin who cruised to 1st place in M14.
And everyone who took part in this year’s (JD)2C – even if you didn’t get into the top three places hopefully you enjoyed the friendly competition with Maroc and the chance to run in some great areas in Deeside.
Kate and Rob Wilkinson, Naomi Lang, Laura Barraclough and Sasha Chepelin were all picked to run for the North Area Team (GRAMP, MAROC, MOR, BASOC, INVOC) at the Junior Inter-Area Competition down in the borders 29th/30th October.
North Area Team came 2nd overall after Saturday’s Relays and Sunday’s Individual results were added into the mix. Well done guys!
BOF age classes explained Seniors: M/W21, M/W35, M/W40, M/W45, M/W50, M/W55, M/W60, M/W65, M/W70, M/W75, M/W80 Your age class is dictated by the age that you will be on 31st December of the current year. E.g. I will be 46 this year so fall into the M/W45 age class for the whole year 1st Jan to 31st Dec. On Jan 1st of the year I turn 50, regardless of when my birthday is, I then become M/W50.
Juniors: M/W10, M/W12, M/W14, M/W16, M/W18, M/W20 Same idea as above except it’s anyone that age or younger by Dec 31st of the current year.
Jargon Buster
Try this A-Z Jargon Buster on the SOA website and if you still don’t get it then ask one of the club old timers to explain.
TIP: It’s a lot to take in all in one go, so concentrate on the 4th column first and make sure you can recognise the symbols for the most commonly used features: path, track, wall, fence, stream, boulder, re-entrant (think small valley), crag/cliff, vegetation boundary, distinctive tree, manmade object (aka prominent feature)
There are are also a handful of extra symbols specifically for urban maps such as steps, hedges and flower beds.
The other columns on the control descriptions add more detail to the basic description such as which feature if there are more than one in the control circle on the map – e.g. No 6 is north western most boulder of at least two – and also which side or part of the feature to help you locate the control – e.g. No 4 south side of a fence corner or No 7 upper part of a large re-entrant.
Organiser’s Manual has a wealth of tips and advice for novice Organisers and the checklist is an invaluable summary of the most important aspects of organising guaranteed to help even the most experienced. Organisers’ Manual (Feb 2025) Organisers Checklist (Feb 2025)
Equipment is stored at Jonathan Smith’s house, Colthill (off Countesswells Road) : www.what3words.com/healthier.hero.tidy
Please contact Jonathan in advance regarding pick-up and drop-off using this contact form.
Example flyer for Regional event: Example Flyer
Remove/add/amend details as required for your event
Course entry stubs: Course stubs for entry on the day at Regional events
There should be loads of these already in Organisers’ box but check and top up as required. Your planner will tell you which colour courses will be on offer. SOLs have additional Short versions of Green/Blue/Brown and a Black course.
For each competitor please tell us: your Name and chosen Course.
Also, if you’re a member of an orienteering club, tell us the Club and your British Orienteering membership number (if you have it handy, otherwise we can search on our archive). We ask for your email address too, which will only be used in case we need to contact you with any queries. (n.b. This information will only be retained until the event, after which it will all be deleted.)
GRAMPIAN ORIENTEERS 