Day 4: Tentsmuir (5.9 km 80 m climb 19 controls 85:23)

One of the two furthest away drives, down to Dundee and across the Tay Bridge. But the trip also included a stop on the way back at a big grocery store for Roger, so it was a bonus day of sorts.

The chuckle for the day, besides my orienteering skills, were the herd of cows which came up to the back of the toilets and started mooing. Roger missed the picture with the cows in it…but, he did get a picture of the toilets.

OK, now to the more interesting part of the day…

The map was fairly small, with many trails and mounds. The course started with a huge blunder on my part, and, yes, it was related to a fence, again crossing where I didn’t belong, though this time not into out of bounds, just into out of my mind instead. I couldn’t figure it out until Sandy put her finger on it… (Left to Right: Susie DeWitt, Sandy, Valerie).

We had queued up for the start on a trail, then for our last part to the map pickup and to the start triangle, we took a right hand turn. I lined up my compass like I was still on the trail, and immediately took a bearing towards my control, climbing over the fence into the forest. Came back out of there, but I was still unclear of what my problem was. I fumbled around and, luckily, I found my second control. From there, I followed the tracks back to my first control, and then I nailed the second control on the return trip. Mostly clean after that with the exception of 13 where I wisely went back out to the trail and relocated instead of thrashing around in the green when I realized I didn’t know where I was.

Placed 55/80.

Here is a picture of all of the available USA participants hanging out at the meeting place.