As part of the Glenfinnan Festival on Friday 11th May I headed out to the Glenfinnan House Hotel for an evening of 'Gaelic for gamekeepers, poachers and hillwalkers'.

Sitting in the elegant drawing room Colm O’Rua and Iain MacFarlane gave us a brief run through of the basics of the language and names you would come across as a stalker or hill walker. This made me realise how much of Scotland was gaelic speaking in the past with cities such as Aberdeen owing their names to the gaelic langauge. After a brief sojourn to the very cosy bar of the hotel, we all got aboard the Eaglewatch cruise boat for trip down Loch Shiel. Local historian Tearlach MacFarlane was a mine of information on the gaelic place names and the history of the people who used to live around the loch.

As we are in the highlands, and all this learning was thirsty work, there was a wee bar in the boat and we cruised back to the sound of Colm, Iain and Tearlach on their banjo, fiddle and pipes seranading us as we had a wee dram (it would have been rude not to). The cruise finished by 9.45pm but a little bird tells me the last revellers left the bar in the boat at 11.15 (an early night really).

The Glenfinnan Festival is just one event that is part of Highland 2007 - a year long celebration of every aspect of Highland culture. For more information on events in the Outdoor Capital go to the events section of the Outdoor Capital website www.outdoorcapital.co.uk