Seven Hills and seven stills

Once again up at 5.15 a.m. and off a short time later to meet up with my OSM folks at South Queensferry - for the run up to Dufftown. Hamish , the pilot was driving a large Mercedes, Regd. No. H1RUM, which was very appropriate to his hobby and interests. So with the cruise control / autopilot we headed northwards via Dundee and Aberdeen, arriving at 9 a.m. which was good timing , and made us plenty early. Found the local bakery where the lady found three seats and masde us wonderful fresh bacon rolls.

As stated above , Dufftown is surrounded by seven hills, and seven whisky stills, Mortlake, Glenfiddich, Balvenie, etc, infact everywhere you go around the River Spey, there are distilleries, all part of the Speyside Whisky trail.

It is the birthplace of George Stephen, , Lord stephen of Mount Stephen, who organised and financed the canadian pacific railway.

The meeting was held in Lodge St James No 289 which was founded in 1897. The hall was very interesting with a small lounge at the rear which had a smal museum and a large display of whiskeys. The Lodge Mark Token is interesting depicting the seven local distilleries.

The Order of the day was for sixteen of us to go through the Ceremony of the First Grade of the Royal Order of the Masonic Knights of the Scarlet Cord, which was conducted by the members of the North of Scotland region of the Order.

This was followed by a dram of "Glenkinchie", which , despite being in Speyside is a lowland malt from Pencaitland in East Lothian.

We then had an AGM and installation of office bearers and once finished head off to a local hotel for lunch. the weather was lovely, sunny bright and warm so it was a nice wee walk up to the hotel. Despite the function hall being a bit barren, lunch was very good - but soon we were off homewards. Hamish, our pilot decided to take the other route home so we followed the River Spey eastwards, past Grantown on Spey and joined the A9 at Aviemore. This was part of the route that Spary Mark and his friend walked during the past two weeks, and on the way we passed several more distilleries.

The A9 was not too busy so we good time southwards by Pitlochry, Dunkeld and Perth to South Queensferry and then home.

No word from yet from those who were going to Dalkeith for their Malta grade of the K.T.'s

Graham has just phoned from the USA where the wedding service has just finished and they are about to go into the Reception. His friends, Briggsy; Joe Myers;, Tony D. and co are all in good form already , with Bonny and Greg Karabin being left in charge of the babies Briggs.

Enough for today.