Highland Games: 4th day in Scotland

Day 4

August 22th

Today was the day for the team-building activity at Mavis Hall park. We had arranged for some highland games to be played between teams comprising our group members, though I had no idea what these games were. After a 45 minute drive, we arrived at the farm. 

It was a grey morning, and it had been drizzling all through our journey. We squelched our way through muddy paths into a warm cozy barn where coffee was being served. I think a few of our guys wouldn't have minded a tot of something stronger, even that early in the morning! Fly, the terrier, was running around, darting between everyone's legs and then disappearing under the serving tables. On  our way in, we have seen a few hens clucking about, and then everyone had stopped to click away. It was really funny to see the mother hen pecking away at the ground, and her brood of tiny chicks following her, stopping every now and then to peck away on their own. I joked that catching the hen was one of the highland games we would be playing.

We ambled through leafy woods to the vast clearing which was to be the scene of the intense competition between the 4 "clans". There were to be 4 separate competitions:

Tossing the Caber: You have to lift a caber (a large pole) so that it is perpendicular to your body with one end pointing to the sky. The pole is then tossed forward in the air to rotate (at least once!) and fall over to lie in the 12 o’clock position, or as near that as possible.

Weight over Bar: This involves (obviously!) swinging a wooden block over a bar which somewhat resembles the rugby goalposts. The bar is behind you and you swing the block with the help of strong ropes tied around it, over your head , letting it go at the critical moment.

Highland Dancing: Teams watch a short demo of highland dancing by pretty girls in flouncy long skirts to the tune of bagpipes before they have to dance the very same intricate steps themselves.

Welly Boot Hurling: Team members have to throw a large wellie boot towards big tyre hoping to land it plumb inside, but it’s not as easy as it sounds, especially if you are under intense pressure to score points for your team!

As one can imagine, the teams were really charged up for the competitions, and the resulting antics were rather funny to watch! Especially when pot-bellied not-so-young guys huffed and puffed while trying to lift the oh-so-heavy cabers and balance them precariously over their shoulders. Funnier still was the spectacle of leadfooted guys in wellingtons trying to match the nimble-footed steps of the young girls doing the highland jig! As for me, I stuck to the only few steps I know, the bhangra steps made famous in all his movies by Dharmendra!

After the fun and games were over and the team totals added up, there was one more little game to be played: Haggis Malt Challenge. A bottle of malt whisky was placed on the uneven grassy field, and every person had to try throwing Scotland’s national dish (or a wooden skittle as a representation) as close to Scotland’s favourite drink as they could. The person who would get closest to the bottle would win the Challenge and the bottle! Our guide, Stuart, talked us through this game, and then proceeded to give us a quick demo with the wooden skittle which to everyone's amazement (and probably his own too!) went on to bounce a coule of times on the uneven ground and hit that bottle smack on target!

Of course, none of us proved to be that accurate (or lucky?). There was a bit of a tension at the very end, when the very last person to throw the skittle inched ahead to the bootle, and was declared the winner. Later. much later, I got to know that the person who ended up losing in the end was the most relieved person. It seems that he was not too keen to handle a whisky bottle, owing to the compulsions of his sectarian beliefs. Well, it's not too often that a contest ends up making not one but two people equally happy!

A happily tired, slightly wet & bedraggled lot finally made their way to the bus, to be taken directly to the lunch venue, The Living Room, that I have written about earlier. Afterwards, it was a quiet stroll along the streets back to the hotel, for some rest & recuperation.