Homecoming Scotland 2009 - Post Mortem from a Scottish Perspective

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The day after North Berwick Games was the Border Gathering where we see Pour1Malt with the Lord Lyon, who is probably having a busy time right now with a wave of petitions to recognise new Chiefs and Armigers for the lowland clans in the wake of interest in clans re-stimulated at home by the Year of the Homecoming.

When Steve and Bobbie had visited Scotland in June they had invited me to stay with them at their home in Victoria and I readily accepted. While there, Steve organised an xmarks kilt night. Here I met xmarkers Raphael, BigMikey, MacMan and the KiltedReverend for the first time. I renewed my acquaintance with my mother's Uncle Tom's family and also looked up Gord, who was a full cousin of Doug's from my mother's Uncle Dan's family.

Back home in time to take some pictures at the Clan Armstrong gathering in Langholm, Scotland, as an adjunct of which there was also a fairly low key Border Clans Day.

The Peebles games the following weekend also had more overseas visitors than usual.

At the final outdoor Scottish games of the season I began to feel carried along by the full tide of enthusiasm generated by Homecoming Scotland 2009. As a consequence of events surrounding the Edinburgh gathering, I now found myself hosting a Clan Cunningham table at the Muster of the Clans. The Muster was held in conjunction with the Clan Scott Gathering and had been a spin off from the Edinburgh gathering concept, at the initiative of the Duke of Buccleuch, and was well supported by representatives of lowland and border clans, many of whom had felt left out from the Edinburgh gathering two months earlier.

The Muster had been well marketed overseas and visitors from Canada and USA arrived in droves (plus a few from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) and filled up our local guest houses and hotels and brought much needed trade to our local shops at a time of year when our tourist season would normally be winding down. Marching with a Cunningham banner, behind the Maple Leaf and the Stars and Stripes, knowing that Scots had helped establish North America, was a proud moment and was the undoubted personal highlight of my Year of Homecoming here in Scotland.
But I was not quite finished yet:-