Furnace for Argyll

Inveraray & District Pipe Band has been declared Champion of Champions in the juvenile grade of the Pipe Band Championships in 2008. They won the World Championships in the grade - their first time in it as they came up from the Novice section last year - and they won the grade again at the Gowal Gathering, the largest Highland Games in the world. This was when they were installed as Champion of Champions. They entered a second young band at Cowal to get them used to competition and Pipe Major Stuart Liddle is about to start a new Grade 2 Pipe Band, to give the young players another band to move into when their age takes them out of the current one.

Dee Mather and Megan Howarth from Furnace joined the band this year and played in the Novice band at the Cowal Games. From the sounds heard from the private quarters of The Furnace Inn, and up around Goatfield they have the makings of accomplished players. So some of the gold dust from Inveraray has brushed our village via Dee and Megan.

Somebody should have a word with Seb Coe to see if the Inveraray band could do a gig at the 2012 London Olympics. After the Mains of Fintry Pipe Band from Dundee stunned Beijing… why not Inveraray?