Report by John Davey

Ex flying Scotsman

About a year ago the RAF Guild had the idea of holding the Tri-Service training day in Scotland for a week, which would enable us to ring at all of the towers. The date was set and information sent out to all three services guilds.

Thirty six people (30 ringers) booked a place and we duly met in Edinburgh on Sunday 8 June for our first tower, Fetters Collage Chapel. The weather was sunny and hot, the last we saw of it. We then booked into the hotel, which was to be our home until Friday. On Monday we went to Glasgow, Paisley and Inverary. As we were early into Glasgow, Stevie (our driver), gave us a tour of the centre of Glasgow. He was happy that the statue he informed us about had a traffic cone on its head. Tuesday saw us at Stirling, Dunblane and Alloa. Wednesday we headed south to Haddington and back into England for Berwick on Tweed, (almost Scotland) then back to the RY Britannia for a bit of R & R.  On Thursday we went to Dundee and to Glamis Castle and back to Edinburgh for St Mary’s PN. As we set off for Dundee, Stevie informed us that at Dundee all of us would have to leave the coach (bus to Dave) as he was going to feed his horses, heard from one of us was: How many?  Stevie replied 340, answer that’s a lot, then they realised he meant he was going to refuel the coach. On Friday we decamped from the hotel and moved to Newtonmore for the night after we had rung in Aberdeen. Two of our number left us for going back down south, and we were down to 34. After the evening meal we made a presentation to Stevie, our driver and to Dave & Chris who arranged the outing. Saturday we decamped and moved back to Edinburgh via Inverness, Nairn, Dunkeld and then to Edinburgh. Another one escaped, down to 33. Back to the hotel for the night and our last meal, then homeward bound.

Over the week Stevie learnt new words, going for a grab, a touch, going down (lowering), and he was going to make up a sentence on the Saturday, but in his words was unable to make a clean one up, so would not try. The weather was wet, wet and wet, apart from when we got off the coach to ring then it stopped most times. All of us had a good time and our thanks go to Dave and Chris for all the arrangements and to Stevie who kept us informed of items to look out for.