HIGHLANDS GAMES

Teambuilding – “Highland Games”

The Highland Games are sporting events that take place in Scotland throughout the year. Their purpose is to celebrate Scottish culture, heritage and sport. Some aspects of the games are easily identified as Scottish; piper parades, participants dressed in kilts and tests of strength. The best known sports are the Tug of War and Tossing the Caber (throwing a tree trunk measuring between 5 and 6.5 metres and landing perpendicular to the ground).

The Highland Games can be traced back to the eleventh century and King Malcolm III of Scotland. The modern Highland Games date back to the Victorian era and the Highland Clearances.

The Games are a celebration of piping, Highland dance and entertainment relating to various aspects of traditional Scottish Gaelic culture.

The most important games, held every August in Dunoon, are known as the Cowal Games with around 3,500 participants and fifteen to twenty thousand spectators from around the world.

Founded in 1865, the Caledonian Club of San Francisco hosts the largest Highland gathering in the United States. It is compulsory to wear the kilt, whether the Games are held in Scotland or not.

A lot of Scottisch beer is drunk. Both light lager and heavy ALE are served cold, and not warm as in England.

Here are some of the games you will discover:

• Trunk Throwing
• Man VS draft horse
• A beer tasting
• The Giant Mikado
• The ancestral double saw.
• Horseshoe throwing

and much moore…