If any oversees visitors are still about after the tremendously successful Homecoming Gathering in Edinburgh and are hungry for more of the same, here are some venues in the next few weeks that can get your kilt swirling:-
Saturday 1st August [/B]at Aberlour in Speyside the home of malt whisky - Highland Games

Aboyne in Aberdeenshire - Highland Games part of the North East Clan Fortnight

Newtonmore in Inverness-shire - Highland Games

Sunday 2nd August - Bridge of Allan Highland Games just outside Stirling and a castle to equal the one in Edinburgh

Mallaig Highland Games on the West course, get the Jacobite Steam Train into the wilderness and to Mallaig, stopping at Glenfinnan where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised the clans

On Wednesday 5th August across the water from Mallaig, the Isle of Skye Games in Portree

Still about on Saturday 15th August in the best city in the world, my own Glasgow. the World Pipe Band Championship at Glasgow Green, bring your own bottle of Buckfast it won't be on sale there, then that evening in the Old Fruitmarket, the Red Hot Chilli Pipers who performed both days at the Gathering.

If you are'nt fed up with all this then possibly the best games of all and the best attended on Thursday 27th to Saturday 29th August in Dunoon, the Cowal Penisula, an unbelievably short ferry trip from Gourock near Glasgow
One great feature of this and I do it every year is the trip on the Saturday on board the Waverley, the oldest sea going paddle steamer in the world from Dunoon through the beautiful Kyles of Bute to the lovely highland village of Tignabruach (spelling may be wrong here) and back to Dunoon in time to see the hundreds of pipe bands parade through the narrow streets of Dunoon and this parade takes some time believe me.
So there's some suggestions for any X-MARKERS still lurking about in the motherland