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Alumni News
Survival Guide to Glen Prosen and the Great Scott Memorial The end of June 1949 heralded many events worldwide but, as far as I was concerned, it was my 7th birthday and the beginning of the High School of Dundee’s summer holidays. Where would we go? A guest house in Stonehaven again for a fortnight? Boring; however, be careful what you wish for! Our parents had mentioned a cottage in Glen Prosen where we would live for the full nine weeks. We found this to be a matter of some concern. No cinema? No contact with friends? No No.9 bus to Dundee? What on earth would we do? Worse was to come. Eventually, we came to understand that the nearest habitation was a mile distant, there was no road access, no electricity, no phone, no shops, no water and no loo. How on earth would we survive? Within a week, our doubts began to diminish. Within a month we couldn’t imagine a better place to be! Every day, rain or shine, we would discover something. Either a task to be done, such as providing firewood for the huge fireplace in the main room, or building a dam of rocks across the Prosen River to form the pool in which I would learn to swim – yes, it was freezing! This was always the first task in every year of the 15 summers we were to spend at Craigiemeg cottage. In all cases, it was hard, very rural fun. We wore singlets, gym shorts and gym shoes all day and every day. If it rained, one got wet. When the rain stopped, one quickly became dry. Only on long walks or when fishing did we wear or take along something more substantial. We came to know nature in all its summertime forms. From the curlew to the capercaillie, we learned to recognise bird calls and
the ways and means of survival for the flora and fauna of the glen. We learned the best way to catch and kill rabbits for the pot and dig for ‘bramlin’ worms in the silage heap; these were best for catching brown trout in the two nearby burns, the Cramie and the Logie. We learned to recognise the weather; that it was always windy, that the poem ‘red sky at night,’ had real meaning. The population of the glen ran in single figures, but each figure was an immense personality. Alec MacKenzie at Cramie Farm introduced me to whisky served in a fish paste jar and the farmer at Cormuir, Geordie MacIntosh, very proud of his Black Watch history, would invite me every year to a very large ‘High Tea’ for which I performed on the pipes as taught to me at school by that marvellous and well known teacher, Donald MacLeod. Each ‘first’ event took place during my fourteenth year. And to round off the summer we would have two weeks of grouse-beating, for which we were paid £1 a day for walking up to 25 miles before returning to school, brown and fit, ready for the first game of rugby. Our PE teacher, the late, great Dallas Allardice encouraged us in this pre-season form of training. And Jack Stark, Janitor and cricket coach par excellence, who gave up his Friday evenings supervising the school rifle club, recognised an ability to shoot which I’d acquired on the hunt for the pot and would bring a bit of silver to the school. A grocery van came every Monday evening to the end of the drive at Cramie Farm about a mile distant; fresh milk was provided by the farm on the other side of the glen at Cormuir. The first task of the day was to take a flagon for filling, which involved an exacting round-trip of almost two miles over dry-stane dykes and the Prosen River.