Kingussie Holidays

Kingussie always was one of my favourite places as a young boy. My aunt and uncle lived in King Street, near the sawmill and I can still remember the smell of the wood shavings burning.

I loved going down to the station and watching the steam trains, especially the mail expresses as they roared through the station. They dropped off and collected the mail pouches using special equipment on the side of the Royal Mail coach. It was always exciting seeing the postman (sometimes my uncle Donald) arrive and watching the mail being hung from the hook. I knew to expect a fast train and it was sometimes hard to decide whether to stand on the footbridge over the lines or climb on the level crossing gates or just wait on the platform. After all, I was only about 7 or 8 years of age and what better way to spend a couple of hours?

However, Kingussie offered other attractions for me, like the golf course, where my brother and I soon found the best places to hunt for lost balls. One such place was in the Gynach burn which flows fairly rapidly alongside the course. Many happy hours were spent "up the Gynach".

One ploy that we devised to get good balls was to lie in the long grass at the top of a ridge and watch a foursome hit their shots across the burn and over the ridge. We would watch where the balls landed behind us, run down and lift them and disappear before they could get anywhere near the top. I'm sure many a player wondered how so many balls could just go missing, all at once. We would take them back to the clubhouse and get paid some pocket money for them, all found 'legitimately', of course.

Nowadays, the police would probably be involved but in those days (the 50's) everything seemed to be a lot more easy going. I always wanted to live in Kingussie but that didn't happen and now I live in Florida ........... quite a difference but I will always have very happy memories of Kingussie.