Syd Scroggie

SYD Scroggie died on Saturday at his home in Bridgefoot, near Dundee, at the base of his beloved Sidlaw hills. He was 86.

Despite losing his sight and a leg to a landmine during the Second World War, Scroggie achieved more in his lifetime than most, becoming a renowned hillwalker, author, poet, self-taught Greek scholar and honorary Doctor of Laws.

Born William Sydney Scroggie in Nelson, Canada, in 1919, he moved to Scotland after his father, originally from Newport, Fife, was killed during the First World War while fighting for the Canadian army.

Scroggie attended John Watson's Institution in Edinburgh and Dundee's Harris Academy, where he played wing-forward in the school rugby team of 1935-36 that went unbeaten.

At school, he was also a keen mountaineer and, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he quickly volunteered for the army.

During the war, he saw five years' active service, firstly with the 7th Cameronians, Scottish Rifles, before becoming a Lieutenant in Lord Lovat's Scouts, a ski/mountain regiment.

Just weeks before the end of the war, he was involved in fierce fighting against crack German alpine troops in northern Italy when he stood on an anti-personnel mine, losing his right leg and the sight of both eyes.

He spent the next three months in a Naples hospital where he was given an artificial leg before being shipped to St Dunstan's, which provided assistance for servicemen and women who had lost their sight.

Undeterred by his injuries, Scroggie studied at New College in Oxford before returning to Dundee, where he took a job working on the switchboard at NCR and stayed with the company until he retired 23 years later.

Once back in Scotland, he embarked on a lifetime packed with achievement, which resulted in him featuring on the popular TV show, This is Your Life, in 1964.

With a tin leg, he walked to work every day from his home outside Dundee and soon resumed scaling mountains and forging gullies with friends, or later his children, acting as guides.

He once wrote, "I can do without my eyes, but I can't do without my mountains.

"Whateverwe call the hills, it has nothing to do with sight. It is an inner experience and can be as poignantly savoured with your eyes shut as open."

In 1954, he began teaching himself Greek, learning from a Braille grammar book and eventually working his way through the writing of Herodotus and Thucydides. He was also a poet and author with several volumes of published work.

Scroggie was friends with accomplished Dundee painter Lex Braes - an alliance that led him to be blacklisted by a rightwing pressure group.

In 1988, during apartheid in South Africa, Edinburgh District Council controversially purchased Braes' portrait of Nelson Mandela.

The furore surrounding the move prompted Scroggie to write to a Scottish newspaper in defence of his friend, which led to him being deemed a subversive by a right-wing group, the Economic League.

In 2000, a cairn and indicator was erected on top of Balluderon Hill in the Sidlaw hills in tribute toScroggie's achievements. Despite then being 81, he climbed to the top, guided by his wife, Margaret, for the unveiling of the cairn. The following year, Dundee University made him an honorary Doctor of Laws.

Pre-deceased by his first wife, Barbara, he is survived by wife, Margaret, and children, Jamie, Sydney and Mary, and four grandchildren.