Arisaig Highland Games 2008

The Arisaig Highland Games and Clan Ranald Gathering took place today.
I have posted some of the pictures I took of the events.
A parade through the village to open the games took place at 11 am with all of the Clan heads in the prosesion behind the Local Lochaber Piped Band.
My husband and I went along to the games field as my husband was the piping steward for the day.
I wandered around taking photographs of some of the locals and some not so locals who were also competing from as far a field as America.
The oldest competitor in the Heavy section is a local man in his early 70s well done him for showing the young boys how to do it.
Every year he says it will be his last but I for one would like to see him come back next year.

The piping competition was well entered by both adult and junior pipers and the winner was an excellent piper he won three of the four events.

There were two ladies also entered one senior and one junior, the senior came from America, unfortunately she went away empty handed, the junior on the other hand came second in both her classes, well done to her.

The weather started fairly calmly but became a little blustery later in the day with the odd rain shower.
It did not dampen the spirits of the audience though they stuck it out, they were very vocal in their support of some of the local competitors especially the oldest competitor, he seemed to rally at their calls and put on a tremendous performance.

We presented a new trophy the Creag Mhor Trophy for the Caber Tossing competition this year, this is in remembrance of my husbands father who was also a competitor of the games in the past.
My husband presented the trophy to the two joint winners this year, who tossed a coin to decide who took the trophy home for the first six months ; )
Once all of the festivities had finished we helped clear the field.
It is so quiet once again, now the crowd have gone.

To all those who took part well done for supporting the games and keeping them alive.
To the visitors who came thank you and hope to see you next year.
I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did?

Not so lucky Heron

I thought I better let you know what we are up to as it's been a while since I have put anything on here.
Well it's been all quiet on the Western front at the moment.
We have had some brilliant weather here with the odd days of cloudy and wet outbursts.
It's good for the grass and keeps the midges down we hope.

We went to a wedding in Girvan a couple of weeks ago and it was a brilliant day for a wedding.
The other guests on our table were all men that worked for a company called Barr Construction that worked on the Arisaig to Kinsadel By-pass a couple of year ago.
My husband made friends with a few of them whilst they were in Arisaig and kept in touch when they finished the road.
One of them got married after a long long engagement, we were honoured to be asked.
The only thing that was missing was the good old Scottish Ceilidh band, but it was a great day and night anyway.

We managed to finish the second new bridge across the burn last week, which is a strong and sturdy structure, It will probably outlast us two anyway.
Well we thought the cows would use them as the original bridge had been down for a while, even thought the bridge was down the cows still insisted in coming up the burn on the opposite side of the burn, but cows have a mind of their own and the day after we finished the first bridge they decided to come up the burn on our side and never used the bridge at all, well you cannot win them all can you ; ) even now they still have not used the bridge.

Yesterday we went to the Nairn Agricultural Show, the show had been relocated to a new venue just out of Nairn, we thought it was a lot better on the new ground as parking was a lot easier and the show ground had room for more attractions.
It was very hot and sticky weather, it was a brilliant show, I had some pictures to post, but my camera decided to throw a wobbly and I lost everything, I was so fed up all the memories lost.
The overall show champion was a beautiful Clydesdale Horse, it was in against a Suffolk Sheep and Belgian Blue Bullock.
I had a great picture of the Suffolk which could be seen between the legs of the horse like little and large, I had pictures of at least thirty vintage tractors and a comical picture of two dummies that were made to look like and old man and woman sitting on the back of a tractor on a back box the old man dummy was holding an accordion and the old woman a wash board, such a shame.
I lost all of the wedding photographs I had taken also and a picture of a Heron standing on top of our Byre roof this morning.
Someone told me it was good luck to have a Heron on your roof unfortunately on this occasion I think the luck flew away with the Heron.
We have a few shows left to compete in ourselves over the next couple of weeks so hopefully I will have sorted the camera out by then and post a few more of our memories.
I will keep you posted how we do.