Monthly Meeting - "Are We Nearly There Yet?"
Anne Artis rang the school bell and welcomed everyone to a cosy Ruskie Hall on a dreich night. We have a number of apologies for the evening as the Ruskie members are busy rehearsing, singing, lambing or being treated to a special family night out! Anne reminded us of the matchbox competition for April, using standard matchbox size available from Liz. Our craft group continues to meet and, as the competition for the federation meeting is a crochet baby hat we need to keep up the practise! The Federation quiz is on 1 April (no fooling!) and Ruskie are hosting as we won last year so help with providing the tea will be appreciated (names to Liz). Additional dates for the diary include a visit and tour of Cultybraggan Camp on 20 April (and a tea at Comrie Croft); and the Federation Spring Meeting in Bridge of Allan with Morton Pairs (3 fabric flowers, 2 individual lemon tarts) and New Forge (Crochet baby hat). Isobel shared that the boat to Inchmahome will be running again soon if anyone is interested.
Bruce Keith, author, surveyor and consummate storyteller then educated and entertained us. His ability to make a seemingly niche topic fascinating and fun was truly amazing and generated lots of applause during the evening.
He began by introducing his first book on Bridgescapes in Scotland which was started as a millennial project and finished, as an “overnight success”, in 2017! His second book ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ was completed during covid in 17 months – a great improvement! Often children ask ‘are we nearly there yet’ after 10 minutes of a journey and Bruce kept his daughter entertained by counting Eddie Stobbart lorries which was easier than his childhood when his father made him count mile markers and work out journey times to their destination. He shared a childhood photograph and the story surrounding the snapshot highlighting that a photo is only a single moment in time. Going back in time, he explained about the origin of a mile based on the stride of an average roman solider – which could vary widely and why Marcus Agrippa standardised this to 5000 paces of his foot to identify a Roman mile. The Romans were in Scotland for hundreds of years but left very few markers but Sir Robert Sibbald found one in 1697 which is now in the museum in Edinburg. The military road ran beside the Antonine wall and a marker was found for Auchindavie (which is now Sainsbury carpark in Kirkintilloch!). In Islay you can see the influence of Roman numerals on their markers (where it is hard to be more than four miles from anywhere!). He told us the story of the difference between an English mile and a “lang Scots mile” which is an Orwellian 1984 yards – and defined in Ayr where they encourage us to ‘walk a mile and lose an inch’ . He also talked about William Roy who created the Ordinance Survey maps as part of his military career where he was chief surveyor and had 6 teams map the whole of Scotland at 1:30000 with all of the burns and houses and roads. This remarkable record was made using a chain which could have been 45 or 50 yards but a standard chain is 66ft long. The scale on the maps can tell us about important towns in the past eg Alyth was more important than Blairgowrie as it had 8 markets a year so is written in bigger letters.
Bruce also showed us pictures of a restored mile marker, which needed to be restored after the mile markers were removed after the second world war to confuse the Germans if they landed. These removals were the biggest loss of roadway signs in history. However the Germans did produce the first 1:50000 metric maps converted from the 1:1inch Scottish maps! More stories covered the Mauretania’s sea trials which used an international standard for a nautical mile; and how 150,000 head of cattle were driven from the glens on roads where you could not get a wheeled vehicle until General Wade built the first formal roads and bridges, then Mr Caulfield took over and finished the job but unfortunately these were not maintained until tarmacadam was invented (not by Mr Macadam! But he did invent a road structure of small stones and camber structures). The turnpike act was them implemented to charge a toll in 1766 and this required mile posts along major routes, finishing with Perth to Blairgowrie in 1843, and also encouraged the development of infrastructure such as toll houses to take payments and issue receipts. He shared pictures and stories of mile markers and finger posts and the use of Gaelic on signs in Scotland (and made us chuckle explaining how an Aberdonian group had explained that ‘ciamar a tha sibh?’ meant ‘fit like’ in ‘English'!) Bruce then introduced us to the Milestone Society and the Benchmark Society (but left it to us to choose which one to join as a member!)
We giggled though stories of remote signs in Scotland marking distances to key places in London (marking distance for drovers and grazing, or for admirals to get to their fleet); or milestones being stolen as souvenirs (but actually surviving the World War 2 removals!); or announcing that a destination is zero miles from a mile marker (you can guess you are there by that point!) Bruce reinforced the need to look after our heritage and thankfully the millennial mile markers are now being well looked after.
Bruce’s stories certainly brought history to life for us but he also brought this up to date with a tribute to sports men and women who went fastest or furthest including Jackie Stewart, Chris Hoy, Eric Liddle or Jenny Graham doing an unsupported record breaking cycle round the world for 18279 miles! Then she went on to walk 44 miles in a straight line from Drumochter pass to Corgarff, a point on Cockbridge/Tomintoul Road which took her 4 days and was even more of an incredible navigational feat. Bruce left us with a challenge to beat her time, and also encouraged us to think wider about milestones and roadsides and our heritage. Anne thanked Bruce for inspiring us, and Sheenagh Beaton shared that Alasdair is currently renovating the milestones in Port of Menteith - Bruce feels sure which is Milestone Society newsletter worthy! Bruce closed by reminding us that while modern satnavs can give us directions, they cannot yet remind us of why we set out on the journey! After another round of applause for our speaker we continued to chat about another superb night and enjoyed a lovely Ruskie tea!
Competitions:
Acrostic Poem (MILESTONE); 1) Alison Smellie 2) Pamela Deans 3) Liz Black
Favourite measuring aid; 1) Catriona Burnett 2) Christine Bauer 3) Libby MacGregor
**Editors note: Bruce really did use Blairgowrie examples, this is not just editorial bias and apologies there are fewer photos than usual but I was too busy laughing at Bruce’s stories and being amazed at his ability to recall detailed numbers and facts without a script! If you’d like to buy a copy of the book which inspired this talk they are available – let Liz or Pamela know**
