IPDG's Travels Week 6

Some of you may recollect that last year, I was fortunate to hit one decent shot in the St. Andrews Kilrymont Golf Competition at Kingsbarns. The prize for finishing nearest to the pin on the short, but awesome and very intimidating 15th hole, was the use for a week-end of a Honda 2000 sports car, courtesy of the Honda West End Garage in Broughty Ferry. After a very busy year, Daphne and I at long last managed to identify a free week-end to take advantage of this. We based ourselves in Blair Atholl and enjoyed both visiting many of the notable landmarks in the area and driving open-topped between them. First port of call was Falls of Bruar, which looked quite spectacular after the previous night's rain. Inevitably, this had to be followed by the many attractions of the House of Bruar. Retail therapy at its best! After a light lunch, we headed westwards via Loch Rannoch to Rannoch itself, which is as far west as you can go without resorting to foot power. We were fortunate to be there when one of relatively few trains in the day to Fort William and Oban, passed through, then enjoyed the excellent home baking of the station tea room. In the evening, back at Blair Atholl, we walked up one of the many attractive woodland walks on the Atholl Estate, meeting on the way a group of stalwart walkers, ending a long day out, after starting some 26 miles away at Braemar. I could sympathise with their view that any cooling liquid would be better directed to their feet than their throats! The next day, after a quick visit to the Blair Atholl Watermill, we headed down past Loch Tummel to the new House of Menzies Centre which also has excellent home baking, to Aberfeldy, then over the hill to the Sma' Glen. Turning off this, we headed for Perth via Glenalmond College, then round Perth to the south side of the Tay and on through Newburgh, Gauldry, Wormit, Newport and over the road bridge to Dundee. The day was rounded off with a visit to Arbroath to see a rare, but totally invisible, gull. It was with extreme reluctance that I returned the Honda to West End Garage today. It was a real fun week-end, with a chance to relive earlier years. I had forgotten the fun of being so much more exposed to the elements, and being instantly aware of the scent of flowering buddleia, so attractive to bees and other insects, and the evocative smell of a newly-mown field of hay. The Honda drives like a dream and I cannot praise highly enough, the engineers who designed it. My thanks go to the Rotary Club of St. Andrews Kilrymont for coming up with such a wonderful prize and to the West End Garage for their generosity in making it available.

IPDG's Travels Week 5

Happily, the rumours that a DG's life come to a sudden end at midnight on 30 June, have proved to be unfounded. Above all else, it is a great pleasure to maintain contact with all the Clubs which meant so much to me during the past year. This is especially the case when I am returning to them to make presentations for their achievements during 2009-10. The success of the District 1010 Clubs has been outstanding, without doubt, with so many far exceeding my hopes for the year, and in the process demolishing so many of my concerns at a stroke. Nowhere has this been more true than on the question of membership. You may remember my hope, and indeed that of John Kenny, that Clubs would achieve a net gain of one member during the year. Available to Clubs which had been especially successful were three RI Awards - for achieving the highest membership growth rate, for bringing in the most new members and for achieving the highest member retention rate. It would be rare for any one Club to win more than one of these awards, and unknown in my knowledge for one Club to win all three. However, this is exactly what the Glenrothes Club has achieved in the past year. In presenting the certificates signed by John Kenny to Immediate Past President Ian Hastie, it was my pleasure to congratulate him and all of the Glenrothes members for an outstanding achievement.