Junior Home Internationals

The Junior Home Internationals this year were held at Oban, Scotland (a very long drive away!). The individual was held on Craeg Mhic Chaillean, and area of mixed terrain with some open moorland and wooded small hills which were covered in bracken (thankfully not quite to the extent of Aberedw Rocks!). The dreaded “3km walk to the start” was a lot less and only took 8 minutes to walk according to Emily. Before going off to get ready and do our own individual races, we had a big motivational Welsh sing song of ‘Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ (sure to intimidate the competition and improve our chance of success ).

Physically the area was a bit demanding with various marshes to slog through and the bracken to sort of swim through, as well as a bit of climb but the navigation was quite nice really, all of the re-entrants, hills and marshes very readable. I made a few mistakes around the course but was chuffed to come back to find out I’d won the w18 course by over 4 minutes! William Thomas as M14 came 7th, and Fay Walsh (w18) and Tom Wood (M14) on his Welsh debut both came 8th. Elen Norris (W16) and Catrin Skym (W14, also Welsh debut) both came 11th on their courses. Alastair demonstated impressive perseverance being out for almost 3hours with the willpower to complete the whole course (unfortunately by then some of the SI boxes might have turned off as he had mp readings on his splits). At the end of the day, Wales were coming 4th overall but we still managed the loudest cheers! After going for a swim in Oban’s Leisure Centre, we returned to the outdoor centre for our evening meal and an energetic ceilidh hosted by a local folk music band made up of teenagers.
Sunday morning was relay day at Ardnaskie. All decorated in our face paints, Wales were ready for action. The 16s set off with their usual banter starts, leading the pack for the first 20m. Emily and Elen came in together to send Catrin and Saskia out, who also came in at similar times to send Fay and I out on our W18 leg where we each made our own mistakes in the first couple of controls then continued around the course on par with each other to bring our teams home in 10th and 11th position. William Reynolds SBOC had a good start to come back 4th. The boys ended with teams finishing in 10th and 14th. Many thanks go to Kate and Clive for driving the minibus all of that way (whilst also having to tolerate the “999 bottles of milk on the wall”) and also to Mark and Alice for generally being coaches and good support.

This article was wriiten and submitted by Megan Carter-Davies.

NB.  Photographs to follow.

10th Nov 14  by Terry Smith

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