Orion M.C.

...at McDougalls Cottage waiting for the winter to arrive

Great pic Alex Who's that front pointing up that poor old birch tree

Seeing a pic of the gable end of MacDougal's Cottage reminds me of when we had a bbq round at the gable...it was dark and a huge amount of alchohol had been consumed (Graham Barrie was drinking pints of Talisker I seem to remember ). Well anyway, we were cooking chicken and I am pretty sure I should be using the word cooking loosely...our drunken state and lack of light meant that not much cooking was going on, but a lot of raw chicken was consumed

Oh aye, during the night someone got out their sleeping bag and had a slash in my rucksack It has been alleged that the guilty culprit was Jamie Smith.

hey, that's MY tree - that's where I learned to prusik before heading for the Matterhorn did I ever tell you about the time...

I remember a certain member of her majesty's finest firing flares at ballons full of gas round the side of the hut one night... not to mention a certain teacher in nothing but underpants demonically ramming the fireplace with a pole while someone with a geometrically shaped bonce was stuffing roofing felt down the lum, from the roof you can still see the crack in the other gable end from the intense conflagration from the jammed felt. And there was the time someone almost got hanged... and the sorry saga of the vegetarian haggis. I even remember three people carrying my exhaust pipe into the hut and laying it along the line of gas cookers, all lit and burning fiercely while I banged it back into shape after it got ripped off at the bad bit of the road, trying to run down some club members who had walked in from Auch and then there's the story of the gas cannister on the fire in a certain border bothy...

Ah, such happy memories: " they were the best of times; they were the worst of times" as CD so sagely put it. I am also sorely tempted to recall a yarn about a hormonaly charged young man in the Lake District who was intent on procreation. In fact so much so that a days climbing was cut short to facilitate his grooming for the meeting with this particular flower of Albions Plain. Whatever happened that night? My silence can be bought......

that wasn't the time you put a bag of chilli powder in my supernoodles? then got in the way of my charm offensive in a stone built pub. I seem to remember you and the old git slagging off said plain so much (and talking crap gaelic) that my flower withered and legged it and that time in the Park Bar where you leaned across the puggy to inform my catch all about the history of her educational institute, precipitating another legging it oot the door. perhaps you'd like to try rollerskating along stornoway pier next time there's a violent storm? just a thought! then I could recount the saga of the collapsed fire and herbal high in a certain bothy, listening to jacques coosto's (how you spell that?) underwater multi speed tape recorder

That was Gavin`s best friend John McNamee Dave Dalziell from Easterhouse and John Thompson are the other two guys in shot.

Nice to see a bit of banter going on the forum folks

I`d forgotten about the "nameless teacher" in the cream coloured y-fronts Tony and I had scoured the hut for anything that said Danger or Flammable on it,then mixed it up in a big canister and poured it down the chimney which had been prestuffed with other highly combustible material.I remember looking through the window into the inferno and thinking that he was going to die

If Bob ever comes on to the forum I`m sure he`ll recount the time that they set fire to the Etive Slabs.Turned out this was just a warm-up ( no pun intended ) before they tried to set fire to Wales on the next trip

Old pic of Nameless Teacher on an early ascent of the Flasher

Nane o` yer fancy dan goretex crap in they days.We were well hard

If you look closely at the top of the Nameless Teacher`s helmet you can see a large hole top right.This was caused by Cube lobbing off Point Five gully for 15 metres and landing directly on NT`s napper.One crampon went through his helmet ( not that one you smutty boys..!! ) and the other managed to rake the skin off his back from the neck down for 12 inches.Don`t think they speak much to each other nowadays