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Estates and was set up for us by the Head Forrester, whose services the factor offered to us. This exceptional helpfulness on the part of landowners, factors, head forresters, farm managers and shepherds, played a very large part in the success of our camp. This preliminary expedition was mainly to allow groups to move together, make and break camp, re-pack rucksacks, and sort out the leaders from the followers. It also gave cadets the opportunity to map read and use a compass in unknown territory. Also know when to utilise map or compass, as one group discovered. They decided to use the compass, as the shortest distance was on a compass bearing, and found themselves battling through 5-year-old trees, and large ditches for six miles, only to arrive at camp site hours later than the others who had read their maps and taken the longer, but easier route.
The main expedition started on Monday 16th July and our object was to cross Scotland from west at Ullapool to the east; at Ardgay on the Dornoch Firth. This took three days and two night's through awe inspiring countryside, with few habitations and most of them unoccupied. When we reassured an estate manager that we would do no damage, he laughed and remarked that that was impossible. It sure was rough countryside.
The first day took us up the Ullapool River, along the shores of Loch Achali, then up the Rhidorroch River onto a track which kept winding in and out of Loch an Daimh where we bivouaced for the night at the north-east end. After camp was set up and feeding completed Stuart Brydon returned from a small mountainstream with a 12-inch rainbow trout he had "guddled." The remainder seeing this and visualising fish suppers for supper set off to have a go. But made so much noise that the fish all dived for cover. Unfortunately the midges cams out and had a good feed of us all and that was after the clegs had departed.
The second day we continued along a track to
Rappac Water and down to Duag Bridge. The path then continued up and around, up and around, and still up and around until eventually we reached the top and below was the Black Water River we descended down to the banks of the river and travelled six miles down it to The Craigs, which is a scattered group of crofts. And a church, this was the first inhabited region we had seen for over 30 miles
and this day we covered over 24 miles. The rucksacks were unpacked, bivouac pitched, meals cooked, and spirits revived ; time to look around and again the water and the salmon in the water attracted attention. Little groups formed obviously pooling ideas on how to poach salmon, but, each schems received the non-success it deserved. The main success of these activities was to use up remaining reserves of energy and we all had an early
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peaceful night.The third and last day was a gradual return to civilisation as we walked down Strath Carron, crofts became clossr to the road, fields appeared with animals in some, crops in others. The track becams a road, the road had fences on each side. Cars travelled on the road and we knew we were near our journey's end. After the soft spring of the mountain patns the road felt hard and sore on the feet, making the last few miles seem twice the distance it really was. The Dornoch Firth gleamed in the sun ahead of us so we had made the crossing from west coast to east coast.
We returned to Dingwall and got our kit cleaned, i and ourselves, then had a glorious meal prepared for us.
Thursday 19th was spent preparing for the return journey horns and on Friday 20th we returned to Dunblane.
C.C.F. 73-75
We have now our full complement of officers for the Corps.
Officer Commanding C.C.F. Major G. Reid.
Officer i/c Army Section Capt. J. G. Finlay.
Adjutant to C.C.F. Lieut. J. Deeley.
Officer i/c Signals Sect. 2nd Lieut. G. Watson.
Officer i/c R.A.F. Section Fit. Lt. I. T. Williams.
2 i/c R.A.F. Section P.O. J. P. Urie.
R.Q.M.S. C.C.F. Mr.J. Mortimer.
ARMY SECTION
This section was divided into three groups—
Recruits, Light Rescue, and Signals.
The Recruits train for the Proficiency Certificate and to date have taken Drill, Shooting and Safety, still to do Map Reading and two optional subjects, and we hope to have this completed by end of term.
Signals. We now have eight classified signallers, and T. Hawkins has been awarded his Certificate by 8 Sigs. Regt., to whom he was attached for a week's course. So we now have a nucleus of Signallers to build this section into a worthwhile part of our Corps.
Light Rescue. This is also a post proficiency course which give cadets a feeling of ssif reliance in difficult situations. The main idea is rescue from buildings which have bsen demolished through explosion, fire, water or act of God. The cadets learn to carry the victims, with or without stretchers, with or without ropes. Thank goodnsss D. G. Nesbitt and R. W. McKinnell had a knowledge of the various knots, following this type of instruction from instructional manuals, literally gets one tied up in knots. They also sat in in the Adult First Aid Class so that this side of the subject would be covered. Recently they have done a bit of rock climbing and
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