Cargilfield: Scotland's First Prep School

There's never a dull moment at Cargilfield. Check on this page for all of our news. It’s updated weekly and will give you a good sense of the goings-on at school.

Munro Hill Walking Weekend

Confidently, we believed that the first boarding weekend of September would be warm and balmy, a little bit of an Indian summer in the air, but, just as last term in late June the hardy band of hill walkers faced slightly different weather conditions. The long-range forecast for the week showed a rather frightening low approaching the west coast of Ireland, which was due to hit Scotland, and particularly Perthshire and the Highlands, just as Cargilfield boys and girls arrived on the north shore of Loch Tay! A plus for this trip is that we decided to hire rather grand bell-tents, which coped easily with any number between four and six, and the insides were covered with rugs and blankets and beanbags and candles. No extra pressure in terms of putting up tents and getting the cooking shelter going; we were going out to eat at the Killin Hotel.

We had a lovely meal in Killin and by the time we arrived back at camp, it was very dark, although the moon was trying to come out, and the campers settled down for the evening. Headmasters are not stupid so we know that that was probably not the case!

The band of boys and girls managed to sleep through until about 7.00am and we woke up to a lot of rain and wind and gloom, but thankfully this rather grand, glamping experience had by far the best camp kitchen imaginable: log fires, oak tables, big television screen, enormous kitchen with two cookers, kettles, toasters, microwaves and sinks. The head man was on the bacon and Mr Laver was on the sausages and by 10.00 we were all ready to go with our tummies full of high-quality cuisine – where was Mrs Elder?

The decision to reroute from the Tarmachan Range was quite easy: you could only see up to 1000ft and we travelled over to Glen Lyon and parked at the bottom of Ben Meggernie beside Innerwick. The plan was to try to climb Cam Creag (2900ft), a mountain well-known to the Headmaster, because his parents’ ashes happen to be on the top of it. This was a long treck and getting to the top of Cam Creag was up a steep grassy bank – very muddy – of about 500ft but, once on the top, we really found out how windy things were; the west wind nearly blew little Sholto Fursman back down to the bottom of Glen Lyon and we very courageously walked along the top of the ridge towards the top of Cam Creag. I told the group that on a normal day, you could see the west coast, Ben Nevis, Edinburgh and Glen Clova and Prosan in Angus, but today we just imagined that the sun was out and the sky was blue.

We had a bit of fun back at camp, trying to dry everything out, but thank goodness we were going out to dinner again! This time we went down to the Pier at the Loch Tay Highland Lodges and had a superb meal, arriving once again back at the camp in the dark. The other members of staff – and many thanks to all of them – persuaded the Headmaster once again to have some claret and very much against his desires, we settled down to a chin-wag at the end of the day.

On the way back on Sunday morning, happy not to have to take down soaking wet tents and again fed a mountain of food by the head man and Mr Laver, we ventured down to Ben Vorlich on Loch Earn. This was a real challenge on the day and everybody showed quite a bit of courage and determination to get up to the coll at about 900m; sadly the final 40m were just far too dangerous, winds were now 50mph and the ridge on the top of Vorlich is very narrow.

A grand weekend of wet, windy and boggy but exhilarating walking in the hills with friendship and food and fun and jolly good behaviour.

And of course, some of our boys and girls were taking the easy option, indulging in culture and photography with Mr Sommerville: Pitlochry Highland Games was the centre of the action on Saturday and this group of six took some superb photographs, which are on the plasma screen at the moment.

Hugh Thornton-Kemsley was a bit of a star looking after everybody and Zengani was great with the junior girls; Mr Laver, Mr King, Lucy Atkinson, Mr Sommerville and Bronwyn were all stars as well, never complaining and always looking after the Headmaster. The remarkable thing about this weekend was that some of the band asked for another Munro weekend before half term and rather stupidly the Headmaster suggested that that was a good idea: so watch this space.