Congratulations to Gareth, Jan and all the FVO and Tay members of the organising team for Tay 2009. The Six Day event has just been awarded a Thistle Award for tourism. The award came in the National Events and Festivals Category.

The Thistle awards were created by Visit Scotland in 1992 and cover 12 categories representing various aspects of the tourism industry. On the awards website (www.scottishthistleawards.co.uk) they are described as recognising and celebrating excellence in Scottish Tourism.

Open to sporting and culturing events and festivals that takes place on a local, national or international level, this category is split into two awards:

The National award for 2010 was awarded to the Scottish 6 Day Event, Tay 2009. Anne Hickling, one of the Directors of the Scottish 6 Day Company (and husband Rob) attended the gala dinner in Edinburgh last Friday and accepted the award.

This is a great achievement for the event and will generate lots of positive publicity for the Six Day event and Scottish Orienteering. You all through your contributions to the organising team played a part in this success so share some of the glory.

The trophy is a handsome stainless steel sculpture, which is a semi-abstract representation of a thistle. Gareth would like to organise it that we each take turns to have the trophy for a short spell and will try and organise this after we receive it in December.

The other finalists in our category were the Loch Ness Marathon; and Etape Caledonia