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The annual meeting of the Highland Livestock Heritage Society was held at this mart last Thursday and as I waited for it to start I pondered on what we have achieved in the past few years. One success has been the drovers' project, which was aimed at commemorating the work and life of the cattle drovers. In mainly the 18th and 19th centuries these hardy men drove cattle on foot from the remotest parts of the Highlands and Islands to the main trysts, as the markets are called – they congregated in Muir of Ord just north of Inverness. Then they went south to the important Scottish trysts in Crieff and Falkirk and even as far as London. This could mean, between Lochmaddy in the Hebrides and London, 600 miles "on the hoof".
Dingwall is a fitting place for the society as this mart was established in 1884 and was one of the gathering places for cattle from the northern Highlands before they went to Muir of Ord. A few years ago the society set up the project with three main aims: to assemble an archive on information about the droving; to create a permanent interpretive display within the mart; and, perhaps, the most ambitious of all, create a sculpture. It would be a life-size bronze of a highland bull, a drover and his dog.
It was this sculpture that I gazed at in awe last Thursday. It was not only impressive but seemed to epitomise the essence of the droving days. The bull dominates the sculpture; the lifelike drover is clad in the traditional clothes he would have worn and he has a collie dog at heel. Inside the mart the display shows all the various aspects of the droving days from the drovers to the cattle and the routes. The detailed archive is now safely in the new Highlands archive centre in Inverness for all to see.
