Photos from the Fergus Highland Games 2009

[McMurdo]

This weekend is the Fergus Highland Games, Catherine and I went up to man the Clan MacKinnon tent. This was my first time at a Clan Tent, I must say it is a different experience being in a clan tent. We decided to bake shortbread for the visitors to our tent, they were very well received.

We arrived Friday as we had weekend passes, however we were the only clan there at the time, and had to wait as the staff for the games were making last minute preparations. It was decided to go see Pete from Canadian Casual Kilts and Robert from RKilts. It was at this point that I scared Pete by coming into his booth when his back was turned, He turned faster than I've ever seen him move with a raised fist, when he realized who it was he dropped his hand and we both caught our breath.

Shortly after we made our way back over to the Avenue of the Clans or in this case the clan, on the way we stopped to watch some of the Heavy Events that were already underway. Here are some of the photos:









The booth that we had set up along with the Saltire


The Fraser's were there


Then it was back over to the field to watch some more heavy events




Saw this gent with some interesting looking cuffs on his hose, I've never seen any quite like them


Here is the list of clans that participated


more to come

[Mael Coluim]

Glad you had your first tent of participating with a Clan tent. I'll bet you will be convening one soon!

[McMurdo]

The Wee Airship with the clan plant


Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series was there, more about her later.


Today was the March of the Clans, I decided as I do not have MacKinnon kilt that I would wear the Isle of Skye, as it was cooler than yesterday this was the outfit I picked out for the March


It was about that time that Andrew M Stewart came by it was great meeting Andrew who is a new member here. Here we are together


Here is Andrew with the Saltire


Diana Gabaldon, myself and the Saltire, she was gracious enough to sign the log book.


We lined up for the march and there was some confusion as they decided to do the march in a reverse alphabetical order. As were standing in line we were hit with the smell of cigarette smoke, now for me this is nothing more than a minor annoyance, however Catherine suffers from asthma as such we were unable to do the clan march.

More photos to come.

[SFCRick]

Grand photos

[Ancienne Alliance]

Thank you for these photos, Glen.

Diana Gabaldon's books are translated into French. Chrystel and I are fans.


Best,

Robert

[McMurdo]

Here are a sample of the crowd.

An older gent dressed as William Wallace, he was a hit with the kids, they always seem to like the really big swords


















As Catherine has long hair, and I know there are others with long hair on he forum, I thought I should post this photo



more photos to come

[McMurdo]

The Saltire was quite popular, we had many different XMarkers come to the booth to sign the log book, here are those photos

muirkirkca with the Wee Airship


Robthehiker


MacPel and a gent who was banned from XMarks, but wanted a picture with the ship anyway.


Robert with his old friend


The Wee Airship guarding some of the shortbread that we brought


Here again is Diana Gabaldon and myself with the Saltire, we explained the entire thing to her, she did remember Steve from Freedom Kilts,and was quite amused that the Saltire had been Catherine's something blue at the wedding.


Again Andrew with the wee airship


more to come

[McMurdo]

Here we have XMarks own Robthehiker doing his best I'm a Kilt Model impersonation







I just had to get a photo of this gent


Burnett's and Struth were featuring their Bilt Kilt, not my cup o tea but I thought a photo was in order, I did talk to him about it. The sporran is a style they sent to New York for Dressed to Kilt, apparently it was a big hit.



More photos to come

[McMurdo]

Catherine needed to get away from the clan tent for a while so she went to see the dancers here are some of her photos


















More to come

[McMurdo]

More of the dancing





















Those are about all the photos we have, we left yesterday as both of were coming down with migraine headaches due to the pressure change. A Pipe Major guided us through the crowds so that we could leave, it was something to see. It is a good thing we left when we did, we had to pull over I was driving and the headache was getting so bad that it effected my vision, so then Catherine took over.

All in all it was a different experience from being just a camper, we did meet some wonderful people and reconnect with some others, though we both thought there were some unfortunate events that led to the Games not being as successful for us as we would have hoped. I'm not sure that we will do a clan tent at Fergus again, who knows though this was a quick decision so maybe by next year we'll have t set up better as well.

If you've got any photos you'd like to post, please add them to this thread.