FVO Celebrates its 40th Anniversary
Forth Valley Orienteers celebrated its 40th Anniversary this weekend with two excellent races, a small party, a little whisky and lots of cake at the FVO Fab at Forty weekend.
The races took place at scenic Rannoch Forest, in Perthshire, with a Middle Distance race on the Saturday and a classic Long Distance race on the Sunday. The focus was on top quality orienteering with course planners Ted Finch and Dave Coustick certainly extracting the most out of the proper Scottish challenge that Rannoch presents, whilst organiser Trevor Hoey kept a relaxed eye on logistics.
In the middle distance race the standout performance came from FVO's own Will Hensman, fully justifying his call up to the Scottish Squad for the upcoming Senior Home Internationals by comfortably beating fellow squad members Murray Strain and James Tullie. James' wife, Jessica, had an excellent day as well, winning her category by over 16 minutes.
Meanwhile, in the juniors, FVO's Jamie Goddard and Ewan Purves took excellent victories on the Yellow and Orange courses respectively.
On the Saturday evening FVO President Roger Goddard led all in raising a glass to the club's founding fathers: Ted and Val Finch, Brian Porteous and Sue Harvey. All are still influential today, with Ted and Val active FVO members, Brian the current International Orienteering Federation President and Sue a director of Harvey Maps. A fun evening was had reminiscing about old times over burgers and beer.
On Sunday morning it was back to the orienteering and the classic long distance challenge of Rannoch. Both Tullies proved themselves up to the test with comfortable victories in their respective classes. There were a number of other excellent performances too: club President Roger Goddard took time out of his marathon training to win the Brown course, Martin Dean won both days with a large margin on the Blue course and in the juniors Jamie Goddard won easily again on the Yellow course.
A great weekend to celebrate Forth Valley Orienteers - really Fab at 40!