Summer orienteering at Coast and Islands
Credit: Lynne Walker
Coast and Islands is a multiday orienteering event with low key organisation and quality orienteering on mainly new areas! Entries are limited to 200 competitors and this year you entered a group number (so you could be with friends) and this was your start block for each day. This meant very little queueing at the start and there was flexibility regarding your actual start time.
In 2022 the Coast and Islands event was held across areas around Tarbert (Kintyre) and on the Island of Arran. There was a mix of sprint races, forest races and a bit of open moorland thrown into the mix. The key difference between C&I 2021 and C&I 2022 was the lack of travelling for the first four events. In 2021 it felt as if we were always on a journey as we moved south from Lochinver to Skye; this year we stayed at Tarbert Holiday Park on West Loch Tarbert and cycled or walked to each event. Ok, so some of the cycling was 'interesting' as we took the hill route to the race in Tarbert (and cycled back on the road!). For one event it was less than 500m walk from the motorhome! On Arran we based ourselves in Brodick and cycled to the three events there - a 17km cycle with a lot of climb was a good warm up for the final event!
Tarbert provided a good introduction; although a small village the course took us around various alleyways and then up onto the ground around the castle which provided a contrast to the urban area. Competitors lounged around in the sun on the grassy arena before and after their runs, catching up and dissecting their routes.
The second day was a visit to Torinturk on the north side of West Loch Tarbert. This is a very detailed area of coniferous forest and coastal woodland; constant map contact was needed as relocating would have been very very difficult. Visibility was low especially in the woodland areas. Maybe the highlight was the route choice across the mud flats - yes the tide was out when I was there!
Days 3 & 4 were from Tarbert Holiday Park on an area called Corranbuie. Day 3 used the woodland area - again low visibility and good map contact all the time was required while Day 4 used some of the coniferous plantation as well as the woodland area. There was a cafe at the holiday park - they had their busiest days ever serving the orienteers!
For the forest areas, I think that Day 4 was my favourite but this was more to do with the planning style than the area. Days 2 & 3 were very much a 'control pick' so you knew where you were everytime you found a control (my longest leg on each of those days was 200m). If there had been some longer legs then that would have really challenged the navigation! Day 4 had some longer legs so I had to plan my route a lot more.
We then had a rest day so the event could move to Arran. This was very well planned as it was the only day we had rain during the week.
Day 5 had two events for us - just because you can! Merkland is a coniferous plantation forest near Brodick Castle and I had expected the worst. However I was pleasantly surprised to have a reasonably runnable plantation for my course; I was also helped by catching up with another runner on my course and we tried to out-navigate and out-run one another! Later that day there was a sprint event around the grounds of Brodick Castle - they were closed to the public by this time so the chance of a collision at a corner was less. I really really enjoyed this - it was full on navigating - up, down and around the bushes and open grassy areas. 20 minutes of full on fun!
The last day event was at Whiting Bay and involved plantation forest (still got the scars from the brambles here!) and an open area of former farmland which has not been used for several years (avoided the brambles here, I had learnt my lesson). We started on a 1:7500 map before turning over to 1:4000 map. I found the transition Ok, it was actually pleasing to arrive at my 'tick off' features quickly!
There were two of us from BASOC there; Rob Hickling had an excellent result, coming third on the Medium course (five out of seven results counted). Lynne took part on the Short course and managed to come well within the top half of the class.