Am Bratach No. 190
August 2007
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Some great turns at Durness games

At last Friday’s Durness Highland Gathering, Larry Brock from North Carolina was the outstanding heavyweight, winning seven out of the eight competitions, winning the overall championship of the games and the Carrie Cup. Matt Dillon of Culbokie was the best field athlete, taking home the Cape Wrath Trophy, winning all of the events he took part in. Donald Morrison, 17, was the exceptional local, competing in field and heavy events and also winning two trophies, The Keep Fit Trophy for outstanding althlete in the Durness parish and the Ferguson Cup for 16-18 year olds confined to Sutherland.

“We managed to avoid showers all day, takings on the gate were up as were the numbers of stalls and the variety of entertainments,” said secretary Rebecca Machin. “It was a good day all round!”

In a lighthearted speech, which began in his rich Reay Country Gaelic, the 2007 chieftain, Willie Morrison, recalled that he was born less than a mile from the games field and had been brought up just two miles away.

His first memory of the games — the Durness games that restarted after the war — was from 1949. “I was just a little boy then,” he recalled. “The games have gone throught various phases since then, but they’ve gone from strength to strength, and, nowadays, thanks to a hard-working and very good committee, they certainly seem to be prospering.”

“I was not one of the world’s great athletes myself,” he pointed out. “I did run a little bit and putt the shot at school, but I was never in the first flight, but I can assure you before the end of the day I will have distinguished myself at tilting the elbow when I meet old veterans, old friends!”

He was very pleased to see a veteran of Saint Vallery on the field, from Ullapool. “He must be one of the last, Willie MacRae, down in the middle of the field there,” referring to the gentleman who mentors the admired Ullapool and District Junior Pipe Band, which was present, along with a band from Forres. “He is a man who came home all these years ago with a leg full of bullets,” said Mr Morrison. “But he’s still with us, standing straight on the field up there,” he added, to applause.