Last week was the Scottish Six Days, which was attended by three CUOCers and a bunch of DRONGOs. We all stayed on the official campsite in Ballater, arriving on Saturday night to find a nice maze set up by Matthew. After a few attempts at this, we headed out to look for a pub for dinner, to be turned away by the first four places we asked due to the massive influx of oddly dressed hungry people earlier that day. Eventually we found one, which had acceptable food, but no massive fish, so Paul was disappointed.
The first night, also provided the first ten renditions of the official S6D songs, which are linked here, here and here.
Sunday was the first day of competition, held at Glen Tanar, which had a lot of climbing, head height heather and not very much navigational interest. Needless to say, it was physical. Paul struggled in these conditions, running off the map on the way to number nine, while Jonathan and Pippa had less eventful, generally solid runs.
On the way back to the campsite, some people went swimming, where Pippa found 51 ticks on herself. According to a google search of 'What percentage of ticks carry Lyme Disease', some simple maths and some dodgy biology, this means that there is now a 6.8% chance of contracting Lyme Disease from a Pippa bite.
The next two days were held on adjacent areas, Balfour and Birsemore. These were more runnable and more interesting, and it continued to be sunny, which was nice. More importantly though, on the evening of Day 3 was the rest night party, which consisted mainly of watching inexperienced, inebriated, unbalanced, underage adolescents falling over.
After a leisurely lie in on the rest day, one party set up for a stupid run up Lochnager, which proved to be sunny and spectular. Others opted for a more pedestrian stroll around Loch Muick, which looked fairly boring, and it started to rain, so the run option started looking less stupid.
The rest of the days provided lots more nice terrain, (including plenty of climb and deep heather), good competition and inventive ways to cook enough food for seven on four small stoves (turns out you can cook peas with the water from drained spuds!)
In the results, Paul and Jonathan were 7th and 20th on M20L, while Pippa absolutely smashed the competition on W20L, winning 4 out of 6 days! Congratulations to everyone, and hope to see even more people there in two years time!
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