When I was asked to this piece my first thought, having read previous articles in the Mountaineering Council of Scotland Club Spot, was that we haven’t been around long enough. We’re just a wee club, just past our 20th birthday, and here we are in a big loch with big fish that have been here for 60 or 100 years even.
Then I thought, well we were ambitious enough to call ourselves the An Teallach Mountaineering Club, to take on and run a hut, run many overseas trips to the dolomites, alps etc, and have a good programme of weekend meets throughout the year. There must be an interesting story or two in there. So here we go….
We have always had a fairly relaxed approach to the hills. We used to call ourselves the “no rules club”, but in this day and age that’s not so easy to stick to. We don’t have any graded system for walking as we argue that it would cramp our style. Our members just get together, get organised and get out on the hills.
We have a wide range of experience, ability and fitness. There are folk who do a bit of climbing and scrambling, the usual bagging, a bit of canoeing and folk who just do their own thing. We do take pride in our welcoming and friendly approach to new members.
The club developed a programme of meets using the club huts, as well as YHA hostels and I can remember being accommodated in at least 2 village halls. We rarely have day meets as members come from so far afield. Current members come from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Stirling, Dundee, Bradford, Chesterfield, York, Belfast and even overseas. The meets are arranged at least monthly.
Of course, there are some meets that you can always bank on, the Burns supper being one, we have too many excisemen in the club to miss that one. We have two meets at our hut. One in June and the other in October. These are WWW meets, work, walking and whisky. Muir cottage in August is our family meet when we let the bairns loose on the midges. We have our AGM at an appropriate venue in April. We normally aim for at least one meet outside the highlands, so either the border-lands, lakes, Ireland or Snowdonia. A week in the dolomites or Alps completes the picture.
We have a membership of about fifty five. We maintain our programme of monthly weekend meets and this keeps us active. We are, I think, just like every other small club; when we think we are getting a bit thin on the ground and could do with a few more active members to keep the meet attendance up, we actively recruit. The best approach though is a steady trickle of new members. We are a broad ‘church’ and have members from across the spectrum of locations, backgrounds, careers and age. Female members currently account for about a third of our membership. Get in touch to find out more.
Duncan Little