Article—"With Henderson to the Lochs"

Lt.-Col. H. A. Cape, D.S.O., who, in a brief and amusing speech, stressed the value of music as a civilizing influence both at School and after, and gave us an entertaining account of the impact on his own generation of modern culture in general, and modern music in particular.

THE MUSICAL SOCIETY

The Thursday mid-day gramophone recitals were continued, though towards the end of the term attendances fell off considerably.

At a Committee meeting at the end of term, M. A. Butterworth was appointed Hon. Secretary for the school year 1951-52 and D. A. Haxby and J. N. T. Howat librarians; Haxby of the choir music and Howat of gramophone records.

WITH HENDERSON TO THE LOCHS

or THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

It was with a certain sense of pride that Mr. Henderson and I declared our Scottish ancestry one evening, whilst enjoying a little refreshment in my haunted Gilling home. Apparently the Hendersons originated in the region of Glencoe, whilst the Grahams, my ancestral clan, were less fixed in locality, being evidently rather more vagrant in character.

Perhaps, I thought, G. A. Henderson would like to accompany me on a holiday visit to our native land. We could manage it reasonably cheaply with one of my old cars, a tent, and a "primus". And so we made our arrangements.

On 4th August we left York laden with food and many "borrowed" articles necessary for the perils of camping out. After an evening meal at Carlisle we pitched our first camp near Annan on the Solway Firth. We had left it rather late—it was becoming quite dark and our site was a tall wood of conifers. In the half light the tent was up, beds were laid, tea was brewed and we crawled into our sleeping bags. Pensively and sleepily we complimented ourselves on our "back to nature" choice of a holiday. We left the tent flap open, and I was half asleep when the nocturnal peace was shattered by a wild shriek from my Modern Languages colleague. This was followed by an exclamation in some very foreign tongue. It appeared he had been sharply pricked on turning over. Being uninjured, I investigated and found the tent to be fairly bristling with hedgehogs. "Hedgehogs?" snarled G.A.H. "Hedgehogs," I said firmly. 41

And so through Dumfries and the Miniature Highlands to New Galloway, and on to Ayr. Robbie Burns' country this, and here I must admit my partner became a little trying. Every inn or house where Robbie Burns had been, he wanted to see. Every graveyard wherein any of the poet's friends were buried had for him a morbid fascination. In Ayr I let him have his head, and he spent a quiet half-hour amongst many of Robbie Burns' friends in the Parish churchyard. That evening we shaved and dined at the only open hotel. It will be a long time before the memory of that Tay salmon is lost. It was our practice to shave in the hotels before having our evening meal, and on this occasion Mr. Henderson was somewhat unfortunate. The lavatory accommodation was a tiny room some 4 x 3 and he was in the middle of his shave when a charabanc chose to empty its load of merry Glasgow "trippers" for further refreshment at the hotel. For Henderson it was "backs to the wall" whilst a continual queue surged around him in the one and only convenience. So great was the crush he was quite unable to get razor to chin for half an hour at least.

The following day we passed through Glasgow, where its cathedral must surely be unique in possessing some of the most hideous 19th century stained glass in the British Isles. On alongside Loch Lomond, through Crianlarich and climbing the dreary Moor of Rannock before dropping into Glencoe. Here start the real Highland mountains. The Glen itself is a little depressing, and I don't think my colleague was altogether impressed with his ancestors' choice of domicile. And now we approach our first large tidal loch, Loch Leven. It was most impressive. The road at times is precipitously poised hundreds of feet above the water, and we camped that night in pouring rain on a ledge of greenery above the Loch. It rained all night, and the next morning it took us over an hour to get the car back on the road, up a slippery verge. We sat in the car after this exertion and had a basket of strawberries each for breakfast.

Leaving Loch Leven and its towering peaks we crossed Loch Linnhe by ferry (not before nearly sinking the boat by driving the car too far over the railed movable decking) to Ardgour. From here the road was only a single track making due west to the Argyllshire coast at Aharacle and Loch Moidart. We had arranged to meet Dr. Marshall here, and when we arrived, still in pouring rain, he insisted on our sleeping in his boathouse.

The next few days are amongst the most enjoyable I have ever experienced. Loch Moidart, a fiord-like sea loch, is surely unsurpassed in natural 'beauty. On a small island at its head stands a Romanesque castle ruin, of the Clan Ranald, and it was here that Bonnie Prince Charlie came back to Scotland to be safe in the wild countryside.

In Dr. Marshall's 20 ft. yacht we caught mackerel in the loch, all kinds of deep sea monsters in the Atlantic, and performed perilous 42