Keir & Cawdor

Keir and Cawdor. 

Keir House

The name of the estate near Dunblane evokes different images to different people: to some they are just names of streets off the Old Doune Road, to others they conjure up pictures of an owner, now long gone, Colonel David Stirling, founder of the Long Range Desert Group, a unit who operated behind the german lines in North Africa during the second world war and whose brave and dangerous exploits eventually led to the forming of the SAS, or Special Air Service.

Others may think of another occupant, the actress Diana Rigg who married Archie Stirling, the colonel's nephew.. For many of us young lads she was our mid sixties' pin up girl. We would watch the series, the Avengers, where she played the role of Emma Peel, the hero John Steed's sidekick. The plot was immaterial, the action irrelevant. As long as Diana Rigg/Emma Peel appeared in her skintight leather costumes all was well with the world.

Diana Rigg as Emma Peel

But for some of us, Keir and Cawdor meant another thing: our first place of work. 

It was Arthur Kerr who told me about the place and after a couple of phone calls to the estate office I was told I was hired for the easter holiday period and to turn up for work at Keir Home Farm. There I was met by the factor, or estate manager, Mr Baird.

I recognized Mr Baird immediately. A year before I had spent a lot of the summer holidays giving a helping hand at Davidson's garage in Dunblane. Mainly because my pal Gordon Bounds was working there as an apprentice mechanic. Mr Baird had bought a new Ford Capri and we set it up on the car lift to do an underseal. If I remember rightly, apart from Gordon and myself, the other two mechanics were Jimmy Penny and George Robertson but, after fifty odd years my memory might be playing tricks with the names.

The underseal 'gun' was attached by a hose to a compressor and the theory was that the sticky, thick substance would be sprayed onto the bottom of the car, thus protecting it from the elements and inhibiting the spread of rust. Unfortunately the spray equipment didn't work so we had the painstaking alternative of applying the compound by paintbrush and hand. If you can imagine painting your livingroom with runny honey then you might have an idea of our task.

It was necessary to remove the wheels before applying the aforesaid underseal and, when we had finished the work, we left the car on the lift and retired to wash and scrape and peel the sticky brown mess from our hands and arms and faces, the wheels to be put back on in the morning.

The next morning arrived as did Mr Baird. We fitted the wheels back on the car and watched as the shiny red Capri drove away from the garage. Five minutes later he drove back in.

"The wheels have not been put on in the same order as you took them off. I can feel the difference in the car's handling. "

So. We put the car up on the hydraulic ramp again, took the wheels off and rotated their positions on the car.

Once again we had the pleasure of seeing the car drive off and, once again, of seeing it driven back to the forecourt.

"They're still not right," he said. "The balance is still wrong."

We drove the Capri back into the workshop and on to the ramp.

" I'm not changing those bloody wheels around again!" said one of the others and so we left the car dangling five feet in the air for fifteen minutes while we went off and had a cup of tea.

We returned the car to Mr Baird who drove off for a third time that day and who, also for a third time drove back to the garage.

"It handles perfect now!" he assured us and drove off for a final time that day.

That was the man who greeted me on my first day at Keir. He lived in an estate house close to Lecropt church and was married to a gorgeous german woman. 

Anyway, back to Keir Home Farm. All the others were out working in the woods so Baird drove me to the site, about two miles away. He drove in a second world war jeep. It was open topped and had no doors or safety belts. We bounced around on dirt tracks with me hanging on for dear life. He was okay: he had the steering wheel to hang on to!

Eventually we arrived at the worksite in woods on the Hill of Rhu and I was introduced to my boss, Donald MacDonald. Donald was a good foreman and treated us well. He was the uncle of Anne-Marie MacDonald, an earlier classmate of mine. I did not know that at the time, only finding out from Anne-Marie when we became friends on Facebook fifty years afterwards!

A tree had been felled and my workmates were cutting and chopping it into pieces that could be carted easily away. I was handed an axe and, intending to make a favourable impression on the others, I began chopping away like a madman. The part of the tree trunk I worked on was about a foot in diameter. I hacked away with the axe for what seemed like an eternity until at last, the wood parted. Job done. I looked at my hands. They were bleeding and covered in blisters. Welcome to the world of hard physical work!

After so many years I cannot remember who all my work companions were. I have a tendency to remember many others who might or might not have been employed at Keir. Lots of my friends joined us for a couple of weeks for the beating in august, pals like Eddie Taylor and Billy Ellison. The ones I do remember most, working through the whole summer were Gordon Boyd, Arthur Kerr, Willie Heuer and Duncan Garden.

Colonel Stirling was mad about sport shooting, mainly grouse, and much of our work was preparing the forests for the shooting season which began on the twelfth of august or, as it is often called in Scotland, the Glorious Twelfth. This work consisted of cutting away low branches under head height and generally creating access through the trees for beaters.

We had some illustrious shooting guests at Keir. For example, the directors of Shell Oil France, who proved to be more of a hazard to beaters than grouse, but more of that later. Another guest was the Shah of Persia/Iran. He brought a caterpillar-tracked snowmobile and trailer to get around the hills and left the equipment behind when his shooting holiday was finished. The snowmobile had room for a driver and one passenger, and we nearly tipped it over and down the mountain when about ten of us clambered on board to hitch a ride to the top!

A Snow-trac, not dissimilar to our
'Snowmobile'

I heard many stories about the Colonel, most of them certainly apocryphal but nonetheless interesting.

 Apparently one of his ways of relaxing at Keir was to go out and chop or saw wood. I was sent up to the 'big house' one day and set to chopping firewood. I worked in a sunken courtyard, access by vehicle was through a short tunnel, and happily chopped away, cleaving the wood with an axe and stacking it in a big pile by my side. 

Donald appeared, driving the landrover out of the tunnel. He had come by to see how I was doing. He glanced approvingly at the stack of firewood at my side and then his gaze settled on the axe in my hands. His face changed from the normal weather-beaten appearance of a man used to working out in the open air to something akin to that of one who has seen a ghost.

"God Almighty!" he cried. "That's the Colonel's ain axe. If he finds oot ye've been using it ye'll get the sack for sure!" And with that he grabbed the instrument from my grip and stack it away in a doorway. 

That was my firewood chopping done for the day. Apparently Colonel Stirling was very possessive about his own tools and no-one, absolutely no-one, should touch them.

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, DSO, OBE
Founder of the Special Air Service

He had an assistant, a burly man whom we referred to as the "bodyguard". It was rumoured that he went around with a pistol in a shoulder-holster under his jacket. Probably the poor man was nothing more than a butler but the fantasy made our day more exciting.

One story concerned the "Bodyguard". As was his wont, the Colonel relaxed one day by sawing through a large tree branch with a motorsaw. The bodyguard/butler also relaxed, sitting, leaning against the trunk of the tree his master was working on.

In true 'Bugs Bunny' fashion though, the Colonel sawed through the very bough he was sitting on, the result being both man and branch crashed to the ground, landing on the unfortunate servant and splitting his skull. The victim was hospitalized for several weeks.

The story is highly unlikely but a ripping yarn all the same.

We worked through the warm summer of 1970. Donald MacDonald would pick us up by Dunblane station at about 7.15 each morning and drive us in his landrover to wherever we would be working that day. We could be working in the sawmill at Home Farm or on the estate near Keir House. We might be weeding the tree beds at the Biggins or planting trees on the hills above Blackford. No two days were alike and I like to think that the others look back to those few months of work and remember those days with fondness.

We certainly had some laughs, quite often at my expense, like the time when we had felled a large tree, sawed off the branches and piled them up for burning. I was sent for the diesel to help get the fire going. I duly returned and emptied the can over the piled-up wood and leaves, lit a match and......WHOOSH!!    I had only doused everything with petrol instead of diesel. The subsequent blast removed my eyebrows and singed my hair but the resultant fire was effective.

I also had a try at driving the landrover one day. Having persuaded Donald that I had driven before (Raymond Cairns let Ewen MacMillan and I have a go at driving the Co-op van at Kinbuck one time. My attempt had us missing a telegraph pole by inches and driving up an embankment!) I attempted to emulate my Kinbuck experience by driving us into a ditch!

Thus ended the first and last driving lesson at Keir and Cawdor!

Insects could be a bit of a bother while working in the woods. Arthur Kerr was absolutely terrified of being stung by wasps and, accordingly, we would do our best to tease him by screaming "Wasp!" Arthur would run off for some yards until he realised we were all laughing. You had to be careful when to utter the aforementioned warning though because Arthur tended to drop anything he was holding and run so you could end up with a chainsaw or axe flying through the air towards you.

The joke backfired on me one day when I yelled "Wasp!" Only for a couple of seconds later to be stung myself on my eyelid. My reaction to swat the creature was so quick that I shoved the damned sting in the eyelid beside the first one. Two for the price of one so to speak.

Midges and clegs were also an irritation although our midge was not a patch on the evil, man-eating one encountered in the highlands. On one occasion I was up fishing at Loch Ewe, on the west coast. On driving up above the bay, my friend wanted to stop and take a picture of the loch and the Isle of Ewe (Isle of Ewe too sweetheart! I love that for a placename.)

Our cameras were in the boot of the car but when we got out we were immediately attacked by a swarm of F16-sized midges after fresh meat. We took our pictures and threw ourselves back into the car. Luckily our wives swatted the few of the scunners that managed to follow us inside.

Our next stop was a visit to Inverewe gardens further down the coast. We arrived and parked the car and the the rain started. It had been a dreich day until now but then the weather gods had stirred things up out over the Atlantic and sent thunderclouds billowing over us, in particular over our car park and the rain came gushing down.

However folks, I am Scottish and therefore always prepared to cope with the wet stuff. In the boot of my car I had an army jacket that would keep me dry so I opened the boot and........I was attacked by a swarm of midges that I had shut in my car boot! I swear that the folk in that carpark that day were not running for cover from the rain but from the Loch Ewe midge.

Thank goodness we didn't have that wee monster at Dunblane.

Back at Keir we would occasionally work in the sawmill, usually fetching and carrying for the more seasoned employees.

I recall one occasion when a huge section of tree trunk had to be sawn. Being too big to be offered up to the bandsaw, we had to find a way to cut into smaller, more manageable pieces. The trouble was that the trunk's circumference was more than double the reach of our longest chainsaw. Someone came up with the bright idea to make eight cuts into the wood so that the whole thing was connected to a small piece, only inches big, in the core of the trunk. The tree trunk would then be hoisted into the air and dropped onto concrete. The small section in the core would shatter and the treetrunk would shed its pieces like the segments of an orange.

There was a crane at Keir, made of an ex-army Bedford truck with a hoist and arm fitted to the truck bed at the back. This was operated by switching gear from the truck's drive to the winding mechanism of the crane and then controlling the lift by the use of the accelerator pedal.

Of course yours truly volunteered to operate the crane and astonishingly, after my escapade with the landrover, permission was given. 

Our team cut into the trunk in the places marked by the boss. Chains were fixed to it and connected to the hook of the winch. Everyone stood clear and I was given the signal to commence the lift. I changed gear from drive to hoist and the lorry began to take the strain. Nothing happened at first. The treetrunk was reluctant to leave the ground. I pressed down on the accelerator and, slowly but surely the lorry cab began to lift into the air. The damned tree was too heavy and the lorry's backwheels acted as a fulcrum. As I looked down at my workmates six feet down below me someone shouted at me to slowly take the pressure off the accelerator. I immediately took my foot from the pedal, applied the handbrake and the lorrycab crashed back to the ground. The laws of physics meant that as the lorry crashed downwards I remained a second longer in the air with the result that the cab roof slammed into my head leaving a dent, not in my head, but in the roof of the cab!

There are too many stories to list here of those balmy summer days working at Keir:

Making a brazier out of a milkchurn and toasting sandwiches in the old hut at the Biggins,

Getting shot at by the directors of Shell Oil Franc,

Beating on te moors at Glen Turret.....

The list of storeis could go on and on and maybe one day I will tell them.

My work at Keir finished after I did my best to chop my leg off with an axe (a story I think I have recounted elsewhere). Then it was time to begin elsewhere. In my case in a tax office in Edinburgh. 

However my memories of that summer do not fade but I would like to apologise if that self same memory has omitted anyone who shared the Keir and Cawdor experience alongside me.

I last visited Dunblane in 2001 and took my wife to the Hill of Rhu to see some of the many trees my friends and I planted that summer.

To my dismay, I couldn't find them at first, then it dawned on me..... we had planted them twenty-one years earlier and they were the forest we were gazing at.

Talk about not seeing the wood for the trees....

Tempus Fugit as an old friend wrote to me on Facebook recently.