Scottish Adventures

Eight club members travelled to Scotland over the summer, to take part in some of the UK's best orienteering festivals. They achieved a fantastic set of results and had a great time doing it!

First up was the Coast & Islands festival, a small relaxed festival with about 300 competitors. It is held each year in wild locations across Scotland, this year taking place on the Shetland Isles. Five Eryri members made the long trip including Ian, Marty and Isabel Jones. Ian showed excellent consistency finishing 32nd twice and 33rd once, all on the longest and hardest course available. Marty took on the medium course and the highlight of his week was an incredible 4th place on day 3, one of his best performances ever. Isabel improved every day of the festival, even breaking into the top 10 on the Orange course by the end of the week.

Also at the festival were Anna & Samuel Drinkwater. Anna made the most of the open runnable terrain, peaking with a top 50 performance on the long course. Meanwhile Samuel started well but a small injury stopped him from completing the full festival. Perhaps unsurprisingly our Eryri mountain specialists all struggled on the urban race around Lerwick town centre, but excelled on the wild and beautiful Shetland moors.

The following week was the Scottish 6 Days festival, held biennially and attracting more than 2500 competitors from around the world. Eryri had 5 members taking part, with Andy Allen completing all 5 races of the M60 Long course, securing 55th overall out of 123 competitors.

Jenny Williamson joined the festival on day 2, but this didn't stop her achieving an excellent 9th place overall on the W40 Long course. Meanwhile Rhiannon completed 3 white courses and 4 string courses!

Anna Drinkwater challenged herself to compete in the Elite Women's races, scoring a top 30 and two top 40 results against some of the worlds best athletes. This was despite having to stop half way through her race to rescue an injured competitor! Her best performance came in the 'rest day' sprint race where she took a super 7th place.

Samuel Drinkwater competed in the Elite Men's races, successfully completing the whole festival to finish 27th out of 100 international athletes. The Elite races also incorporated world ranking points and both Anna & Samuel did enough to break into the worlds top 1000 orienteers.