Day 5 Overview
Overview - Day 5 - Craig a Barns
Craig a Barns was the birthplace of Scottish orienteering and has seen many excellent events since 1962. The map extract and control description from 1968 (extracted from a recent article at https://www.scottish-orienteering.org/membership/score-magazine/ shows that we have made some progress in mapping since the year I started orienteering and it was great to see a top-level World Ranking Event won by two of our GB athletes who are Norway-bound for WOC 2019.
Beatrix Potter had a close relationship with Dunkeld and Birnam and I understand that Rotmell Farm features in some of her sketches. We were too late to influence a book that might have been called Peter Rabbit and the lost Orienteers. The area was physically tough with challenging navigation in parts – how we navigated across such an area in the old days is a mystery.
The farmer (Alex Brewster) and the farmer’s father have both been incredibly supportive of orienteering now and in the past and we were fortunate just to have enough space in one of the field “quadrants” to park 852 cars – organisers fact is that you allow 27 square metres per car! The parking team did a great job getting everyone in, but please be patient and follow their instructions when trying to get out.
The top Scottish poet William McGonagall wrote in glowing terms about Britain’s greatest river that flows past Craig a Barns:
Beautiful silvery Tay,
With your landscapes, so lovely and gay,
Along each side of your waters, to Perth all the way;
No other river in the world has got scenery more fine,
Only I am told the beautiful Rhine.
We welcomed orienteers from over 30 nations including Germany and I hope we correctly hung your flags – apologies to Ireland as the orange has more than a hint of red to it than it should and Luxembourg who are yet to gain IOF accreditation. We look forward to seeing you on the final day and your last chance for your four runs to count.
