OUR STORY

When I was asked to do this piece my first thought, having read the previous articles in the club spot, was that we haven't been around long enough for this. We're just a wee club yet to reach our 20th birthday and here we are in a loch with a lot of big fish who have been there for 60 or 100 years even. Then I thought well, we were ambitious enough to call ourselves the An Teallach Mountaineering club, to take on and run a hut (more of later), a number of our members regularly visit the Alps and the Dolomites etc. and we have a good programme of weekend meets throughout the year. There must be an interesting story or two in there. So here we go..

Like many other clubs it seems to have all started with a group of friends and acquaintances sharing a common interest in the hills. The one other thing that the "founding fathers" had in common was that they were all civil servants namely H.M. Customs and Excise (as it was then) although that was no condition of membership. However, I suspect in the early days it may have put off a few potential members. One or two groups of Customs folk had been climbing and walking with their colleagues and friends for a number of years in the 1980s. They used to get access from time to time to Muir Cottage for meets. About the same time some folk from the Aberdeen and Edinburgh offices were organizing annual charity walks up various Scottish hills. These events fired up a few more folk. They joined in with the groups and before long it seemed that the thing to do was to form a club which apart from anything else would give us access to the huts. These things of course don't just happen without some experience, direction and vision. There were a few guys among them Joe Duffin, Alan Dryden and Willie Bain to name just a few who provided these attributes. Aye, and they could argue as well.

The inaugural meet was held at Morvich on 29th September 1989. The booking was made with the National Trust for the "no name" Mountaineering club. Looking at the first meet report I note that there was one I Butterfield in attendance. We then had to decide on a name, not easy. I quote from the club records "A very hot debate then raged for three months on what the club should be called. Tempers rose, positions were taken, poses were struck. Finally a totally undemocratic decision was made in favour of An Teallach. The rationale was that An Teallach is a fine hill - in line with the high moral character of the membership – and the name sounds good." In addition as we had no specific base, most of the members coming from the four big Scottish cities and as we also had no desire to particularly identify with H.M Customs, the club was to be open to all. The name An Teallach Mountaineering Club seemed to fit the bill.

That was us on our way. We have always had a fairly relaxed approach to the hills. We used to call ourselves the no rules club but in this day and age that's not so easy to stick to. We don't have any graded system for walking as we would argue that that would cramp our style. Our members just get together get organised and get on the hills. We have a wide range of experience and ability within the club. There are folk who do a bit of climbing and scrambling, folk who do the usual bagging, folk who do a bit of canoeing and folk who just do their own thing. We do take pride in our welcoming and friendly approach to new members. The club developed a programme of meets using in the main club huts, also youth and independent hostels. I can remember being accommodated in at least two village halls. We rarely have day meets really because the members come from so far afield. The meets are arranged more or less monthly, some are of course better attended than others. Depending often on who still has a box or two to tick. As far as meets are concerned we have some bankers of course The Burns supper being one. We have too many excise men in the club to miss that celebration. We have two meets at Strawberry cottage, one in June and the other in October . These are WWW meets - work, walking and you can take a guess at the other W. Muir Cottage in August is our Family meet when we let the bairns loose on the midgies and of course we have our AGM at an appropriate venue. In addition we have had meets in one or two of the Lake District Huts and a few years ago we had a memorable meet to the Pinnacle Clubs' hut in Snowdonia.

As new folk and friends of friends etc. joined we found ourselves with members from a' the airts. We have a substantial number from South of the border including a couple of stalwarts from Northern Ireland. In fact they at times put the locals to shame with their attendance at meets. We believe that having our members drawn from such a wide area adds a great deal to the club. It has its drawbacks sometimes eg when committee meetings need to be held. But that makes us think harder about whether we really need them. As time passed and folk moved on and new members came along the number of Customs guys became less and less and they are now in the minority although perhaps not yet vocally. Usually found at meets sitting by the fire muttering into their beer and discussing failing parts of their anatomy.

About 1996 a few of the movers and shakers in the club thought that we should look at trying to acquire a club hut. I'm not so sure the idea was universally popular at the time but it was put to the vote and the enthusiasts had their way. Our search for a hut over a period of about 6 months led us to Glen Affric where would you believe there were two possibilities. I am still convinced that we were steered into Glen Affric by the stalker in Glen Cannich who, when asked if he knew of any place that would suit us, quickly told us about a hut he knew in Glen Affric. However he did us a favour and we ended up with a choice between a Forestry Commission building, Athnamullach and a National Trust building, Strawberry Cottage on the other side of the river. Strawberry cottage had been a stalkers cottage before being acquired by the NTS and was in reasonable condition. The club opted for Strawberry Cottage for two main reasons. We reckoned that it was going to take less work to get it up to the condition we wanted. Secondly the Forestry Commission still wanted to use Athnamullach as accommodation for The Trees for Life people. This was the organisation they used in their efforts to regenerate the Native woodlands in the Glen. We would have been sharing the bothy.. Not good.

Without going into too much detail about the work that needed doing let me say that it took blood, sweat, tears and a lot of toil to get it up and running in the way it operates now. Oh, and about £40,000. Great credit needs to go to Joe Duffin for all his efforts over the first few years. Joe of course could not have done it on his own although I am sure he often thought that he was. There was great input and effort from members and a number of non members who got involved often just for the satisfaction of doing the work,, the crack and perhaps the occasional dram. We have had a great deal of local support for the hut and both Forestry Commission (who we rely on for access and firewood) and NTS who as our landlords are very supportive of our efforts. We are also in the heart of a deerstalking area and we maintain a good relationship with the local stalkers. The club is justly proud of Strawberry Cottage and we believe that given its remoteness and location it is one of the best huts on the circuit. But we would say that wouldn't we. If you need to be convinced get up there and try it. Apparently it has always been known locally as Strawberry Cottage because there used to be a few wild strawberries growing around the building. The deer have done for them now. . There is still a lot of work goes into Strawberry and there will be more in the coming months as we are about to upgrade and improve our solar power system by the addition of a small wind turbine.

Well we have a membership of about 55. We still maintain our program of monthly weekend meets We are I think just like every other small club. Sometimes we think we are getting a bit thin on the ground and could do with a few more active members to keep the numbers up on the meets but then as soon as we think that the meets are fully subscribed again. There is a steady trickle of new members, enough to have kept the numbers fairly static over the years.

Like any club we have had our memorable meets and incidents on the hills. One or two are X-rated and will not be mentioned here. However there are a couple worth mentioning in any piece about this club. Frankie losing Spot the collie through a cornice on Beinn Eibhinn. They saw the dog alive under the cornice but did not have ropes and gear to recover him. Dashed down and home to get ropes etc. Back up again next morning. Spot still there and waiting patiently for his master. Brilliant ending The time the club went in to Coruisk hut. Tried the key in the door. It would not open. It transpired that the key was a copy of a copy and had never been tried in the door. They got a message to Donald's uncle who is in the Mountain Rescue team and he got a key in to them via the post bus It was 24hrs before they managed to get in. They had a night on the rocks by the hut. Fortunately they had sufficient refreshment to see them through their ordeal. Alan and Tony being avalanched off Beinn Albanaich, getting separated, Tony getting off the hill to get help that evening. Alan making a decision to overnight on the hill and then walking out the next morning. All done in the full glare of the media. A television crew were following the Mountain Rescue team that weekend and the story made the national news. Another happy ending thanks to Alan's experience, Buffalo jacket and survival bag. Then there was Susans memorable response to the toast to the lasses at the Burns Supper. Loch Ossian 2007. It is recorded in the newsletter for spring 2007 and it is a classic.

I felt it might be right to conclude this piece with a comment from one of our members who when asked for a thought or two to help me with this task responded as follows. "What sums up the pleasure of the mountain experience is the joy of meeting so many fine human beings who share the experience of walking miles with full packs just to spend a few days in some little cottage in the middle of a beautiful nowhere. Strawberry Cottage has brought this Irish man into the company of many fine Scottish folk, who always show the best side of the human spirit, especially on Burns' weekends. The experience has taken us to the Dolomites in the same good company for the fourth year and I look forward to meeting up again at the October meet" Well that's our story so far. I don't think I will be writing the next episode in twenty years time but I am sure somebody will. Duncan Little.