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Highland Games in Girvan, Scotland June 6th, 1999; Girvan, Scotland:
To the left you see the Primaries dancing the Sword Dance. They have to do certain steps in each quadrant formed by two crossed swords. We saw one competitor just walk off after her toe touched one of her sword blades -- it's instant disqualification. To the right we see Jill getting ready for the 'Premier' (highest level before professional) competition. (Her mom is putting her competition number on her kilt.) She placed second in most of her dances. There was one annoying participant who won all the first places.
It was pretty exciting watching David Horne set a record for Girvan -- 14 1/2 feet high. He went on to win the event against the other major competitor Mark McDonald who travels to the states for Highland Gaming.
Mark did it twice, but it wasn't good enough for a win.
After five hours in the blowing cold, and Carrying the 40lb Packs for Distance, we were were bushed.
Our next stop is Northern Ireland and Belfast, a city trying to forget its Troubles Or: Back to Scotland |
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So the highland games in Scotland
felt a lot like the Scottish Games held in the States.
The primary differences are people aren't faking the
accents, the weather is much colder, and there's inflated
fun houses next to the marching pipe bands.
Girvan
is just a minor town with a small sized Games. But they
have enough pipe bands to play just one set each from
10am till 3 in the afternoon. They march on, stand in the
circle and play their hearts out while the judges take
notes.
The second of three big
events at the Games is the Dancing competition. There's
12 different categories of dance.
The
third big attraction was the Heavy Events (a.k.a. Manly
Feats of Strength). There were all sorts of events with a
similar theme: Putting the 16lb Shot, Throwing the 28lb
Weight for Distance, Throwing the 16lb Scots Hammer for
Distance, and Throwing the 56lb Weight for Height.
In
the penultimate event, Mark McDonald proved himself to be
the only heavyweight who succeeded in Tossing the Caber.
It's basically a telephone pole that they balance upright
in their hands, then take a running start and toss it up
into the air, attempting to send it end over end.
We watched the dancing awards and
then retired to our van where we found resuscitation by
the sea side looking out at Ailsa Craig.