I FOUND your item about the Devil's Elbow most interesting ("Sharp Highland marketing drive launched for Devil's Elbow route", The Herald, November 27). Sixty-plus years ago I lived and worked in Glenshee. In those days many of the big jobs – gatherings, clipping and so on – involved neighbouring, when people from several farms got together for a team effort. I had one dog.
Came the summer gatherings; the Old Spittal sheep grazed as far out as Glas Tulchan, they had to be brought in for clipping. So, in a short-wheelbase Land Rover seven men, a laddie and 11 dogs went up the Devil's Elbow. Six of us alighted at about where the ski tow is now, to spread out along the tops to drive the yowes and lambs towards the fank at the Old Spittal. The driver returned to base. Later he would get his dog to assist with the penning.
I seem to remember that the AA had arranged watering points at the roadside; in the days before pressurised cooling systems a car might well have the radiator boiling as it ascended the steep brae towards the Elbow. No problem for the Land Rover.
GM Gall,
Murray House, Gateside, Cupar, Fife.
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