Fair Hill Scottish Games at the Colonial Highland Gathering in Fair Hill, MD

**ASinclair** · 22nd May 14, 05:50 AM

Nice pictures and report. Thanks Richard.

**OC Richard** · 23rd May 14, 07:39 PM

You're welcome!

An interesting thing about these Games was the lack of signage. I drove past the grounds because there wasn't a single sign of any sort. The park has a permanent sign which has an electronic billboard showing current and upcoming events and the Games weren't listed.

Anyhow some interesting kilted folk here, including the group of London Scottish reenactors, one of whom is XMarker BobsYourUncle

I've been going to Games for 40 years now and an interesting (to me) thing is the various things you see in the different bands' encampments. Here in California there's a band that constructs a huge rack thing out of white PVC pipe (maybe 6 feet high and 12 feet long) that all the pipe cases and drums can fit in.

At these Games a band had this thing on which all the pipes could hang upside down like slaughtered creatures

My favourite thing about Games is hearing all the good bands, in this case all bands I'd not heard before. The best time to hear the glory of a well-tuned pipe corps is when the pipes are doing their final tuneup before going into competition, and at these Games the pipe corps tuned up below the bleachers. The sound from above was fantastic and also an opportunity to get cool photos. Here's a band wearing the Red Gordon tartan, the New York Metro Pipe Band

This smaller band had a beautiful kit with lovely selfcoloured claret kilts

This band had an excellent tone from the pipe corp, the Ottawa Police Pipe Band in Ross tartan

Time for tuning is over, now it's time to march into the circle. Note the mismatching kilts, which would disqualify the band in Scotland but not here

The judges approach their prey, clipboards in hand

The pipe corps playing, the piping judge writing (Ottawa Police Pipe Band)

An excellent fullsized drum corps (New York Metro Pipe Band)