Hope you’ve recovered from Saturday (and Sunday, Aurore!). Thanks for showing up and for making it such a fun day – hope you all enjoyed it, and thanks to Steven for the course design. And thanks for bearing with us with some of the controls! Below is a list of pairs and times (Paul Caban trotted round in 3h!!). My memory of the day is seeing Micah and Allen rushing to the ski centre being hotly pursued by Joel and Aurore. Aurore has some lovely pics!
Also my thanks to Tim Doyle for taking in the markers on Sunday – he and Paul Walker, accompanied by Tally the dog, recorded a time of 5h 15min.
Helen
Aurore and Joel 4h 22
Micah and Allen 4h 31
Hilary and Moira 5h 37
Al, Nina and Karen 5h 25
That was fun. Being an awkward type, I decided that we would do the route in reverse. A good tussle with Micah and Allen ensued, where I did my best to lead them astray but only ended up suggesting faster routes to them. Aurore picked up navigation very quickly and will be a good pairing for someone at a MM sometime, but needs practice jumping ditches. Thanks for organising Helen!
Joel
Unfortunately I had to work Saturday morning so ‘competing’ in the Carnethy Mini Marathon was out, however having contacted Helen Wise, she informed me that the CPs would still be out on Saturday afternoon if I wanted to go around the course later (and if I did could I just collect the CPs as I went)
2:30 on sat afternoon myself, Robert Walker (CP carrier) and Tally (dog) set off from Hillend to find the 1st CP. No lines of people all going in the same direction and no tracks cut in the vegetation (as per The LAMM) made the the navigation ‘tricky’.
The 1st CP was relatively straightforward following a low level path around Allermuir before ascending to the summit of a small knoll under Capelaw.
The next two checkpoints were awkward (disguised as windmills) necessitating measurements on the 1:25000 map to find which side of Maidens Cleuth the Cp was and which re entrant on Craigentarre held the Cp. Feeling pity for us the organisers left Cp4 in the planter for a tree on the path down to Black Springs
CP5 involved a long contour around Black Hill to the summit of Cask Hill before another long run down the road, over the Logan Burn and follow a stream uphill to a bend (which I missed several times) for Cp6
From there a healthy run back to the road and along to Kirk Bridge where the Cp was in a much friendlier position at a stream junction. On along a track to Glen Cottage for a Cp that was lying flat (making it hard to find when you stand on it).
Before a long climb up Windy Door Nick to collect the last (and 10th) Cp on a knoll below Allermuir. A slow trot back to the ski centre (even Tally was looking a little jaded) meant that we’d completed the route in 5 and a quarter hours.
A great day out, if only we’d done this before this years LAMM we might have fared better.
Thanks to all involved in setting it up, a thoroughly enjoyable Mini Marathon
Tim Doyle