Community Connections

from Lochaber Life #339 January 2022

Museum centenary

Our Year of Stories

Jo Cowan 2022 has been designated Scotland’s Year of Stories. We’re starting early with a great story sent in by Alex Gillespie of Corpach for our “Once Upon a Bicycle Story Challenge”.

VE Day 1945

I was 11 years old and my father along with all the others at the Ramsey Colliery in Loanhead were on holiday for one day only. We boarded a train along with loads of men all with fi shing gear. We had bikes. My father had a large gent’s upright model and I had a smaller version of the same type. The train took us down to Peebles and then to Innerleithen where we got the bikes out of the guard’s van.

This was war-time, so no road signs, but my father must have had a map and I am sure he had never been in that area before. We must have had food with us, as nowhere was open and I remember the Gordon Arms being all boarded up.

Along the side of St. Mary’s Loch, then we turned off on what then was a dirt track. The old upright bikes were almost ideal for that. The plan was to turn right on a path somewhere along the way to Talla Reservoir.

Unfortunately, the right-ofway signs had all been removed along with the road signs, and we eventually arrived at a very large fence and barbed wire gate across the track with a very large sign saying, ”WD Property. Trespassers will be shot”!! Undeterred my father went through, and I remember walking down the very steep hill to the end of the reservoir. A very nice lady at the farm informed us that the sentries had only been stood down a couple of weeks before. She also made us scrambled egg and toast and milk, as by now we must have been very hungry.

Easy run along the now tarmac road took us out at Tweedsmuir on the main road and still a long way from home. Mother must have been frantic by now, as the train we should have got off must have deposited all the returning fi shermen long ago. I do not remember any recriminations but I probably collapsed into bed.

I do remember it was a great adventure and, without realising it, it set me off on a love of cycling and the remote places we passed through that day. A few years later, I cycled the same route on a real bike and there were still no signs and I was lucky to spot the path that should have taken us over the hill to Peebles and the train home.

The track is now a tarmac road and a second reservoir has been constructed to add to Edinburgh’s water supply. We have traveled that route a number of times on bike, motorbike and sidecar, and on solo motorbike, and it always brings back great memories.

Strange to be writing this 75 years on to the day, with only very vague memories of detail other than I had had a great day and have been lucky to have had many such days over these years.

Members John Ferguson & Caroline Ferguson

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