Friday, March 09, 2007

'A Hundred Years in the Highlands' by Osgood Mackenzie

My wife's great grandfather was Moderator of the Church of Scotland and his name lives on in Dr Graham's homes in Northern India founded to care for orphaned Anglo Indian children. Through the energies of a small number of dedicated people the homes still care for eight hundred neglected children today. I was looking for things to sell at a fundraising event and came upon one of my father's old books: 'A Hundred Years in the Highlands' by Osgood Mackenzie, who founded the remarkable Inverewe Gardens near Ullapool - created from a barren peninsular which he inherited in 1862. I opened up the book and, glancing at the early pages, I see that the Mackenzie family used to make an annual trek up Strathconon each spring. A convoy of horses, cattle and dog carts made their way from Conon Bridge north of Inverness, through to Gairloch on the west coast. I found that they had followed the same track past Loch Beannacharain that I was walking on just a couple of weeks ago. I look forward to reading further.

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