{"id":2776,"date":"2016-07-09T08:32:59","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T07:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2776"},"modified":"2016-07-23T10:56:20","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T09:56:20","slug":"dalbog-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2776","title":{"rendered":"Dalbog revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

The last time I visited the Angus Army Cadet Force camp at Dalbog in Glen Esk must have been more than\u00a0 50 years ago\u00a0 Not that I was ever a Cadet, but my father, Alf Coutts, \u00a0was the Sergeant Major in the Brechin Cadets and each spring and summer in the 1950s he would spend training weekends at the camp with the boys.\u00a0\u00a0 Although he had been a professional solider before the Second World War, and had much to share in training the cadets in the ways of soldiering, the task that he assumed at Dalbog was cook.<\/p>\n

\"Regimental<\/a>
Regimental\u00a0Sergeant Major Alf Coutts (1958)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the early days, before the “luxurious” brick-built cookhouse, \u00a0with its calor gas cookers, cooking was done on an open fire.\u00a0 My father was very proud of the broth he cooked on that fire.\u00a0 Even in later life, while living on his own in Dollar he would inform visitors, “Even if I say it myself, that’s a grand plate of broth!”.\u00a0 He would often tell of the compliments he received one particular weekend.\u00a0 He\u00a0used to\u00a0use a dirty cloth to lift the hot handles of the dixie pots, moving them around the fire, \u00a0Well on this occasion the wood smoke flavoured cloth fell into the broth, only to be retrieved\u00a0surreptitiously, before anyone saw.\u00a0 No one had though of food hygiene regulations\u00a0in those far off days!\u00a0 That day he was told, “That’s your best broth ever!”<\/p>\n

The food stores for the weekend would be loaded up into an big army truck\u00a0from Anderson’s wholesale grocery store in Market Street in Brechin and the journey was made, bouncing \u00a0up the rough track on the west side of the River North Esk.\u00a0\u00a0 When I made journeys to spend a Saturday at Dalbog with by primary school pal, Grant Geddes, it was in the Colonel’s car.\u00a0 James Geddes was Grant’s father, the Cadet Colonel and also the Brechin High School Headmaster.\u00a0Along with the rest of people who would spend the weekend at Dalbog we travelled up the “main” Glen Esk Road, parking\u00a0in spaces at the side of \u00a0the road, then following the little path through the woods down toward the camp on the other side of the river.<\/p>\n

J P Morgan<\/a>, the American financier had built a little footbridge there over the river.\u00a0 He was a regular shooting tenant in Glen Esk in the days before the War.\u00a0 The bridge\u00a0made make access to shooting butts easier for his guests. We called it \u00a0the Pierpont<\/em> Bridge, although I have seen it referred to as the Morgan<\/em> Bridge, providing access to the flat ground on which the old army huts stood,\u00a0a wonderful\u00a0base for the Cadet training weekends, and the perfect playground for little boy visitors.<\/p>\n

And what a playground it was, woods, river, hills, and of course some fine broth to eat.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It wasn’t just Grant and me, others, including by big cousin Lindsay, would joint us for our Saturdays,\u00a0 In those far away days, it wasn’t just food hygiene regulations\u00a0though that hadn’t\u00a0 been thought about;\u00a0 we used to be able to play soldiers, \u00a0borrowing real rifles and bren guns for\u00a0our games:\u00a0\u00a0much more fun that the official \u00a0training the\u00a0cadets received. \u00a0Just think of that in today’s culture.<\/p>\n

Later I did make one or two private visits to Dalbog.\u00a0 I remember Tim Davis, another childhood friend and I cycling from Brechin up the track followed by the army\u00a0lorry and spending some time on a summer’s day at Dalbog on our own, and I also remember visiting it with my Auntie Muriel, again by bike I think, but this time following the Glen Road and wheeling our bikes over the footbridge.\u00a0\u00a0 But search as I like I cannot find any photographs of these visits in days gone by.<\/p>\n

At some point the old wooden Pierpont bridge was replaced with a metal structure.\u00a0 Was it the the Army Engineers who did this?\u00a0 But still the only real access was on foot over the bridge.<\/p>\n

We spend a couple of days in Glken Esk recently and I though it would be great to visit the place again, to reawaken the memories of boyhood games and smoke flavoured soup.\u00a0 As we drove up the road towards Tarfside I looked in vain for any indication about where the path to the camp might be.\u00a0\u00a0 Later, over lunch\u00a0 at the Retreat, I spoke to Joyce who works there.\u00a0\u00a0 She told me that she thought the bridge had been washed away in last December’s floods, and the camp was now in quite a derelict state.\u00a0 I was to look for a draw in place, and I would find the path.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, just as she said, we found a place to draw in with the van, and I went off with camera in hand, remembering as I went, the lay of the land.\u00a0\u00a0 Sadly, the bridge was indeed no more… just the east end, a “diving board”\u00a0 over the river, and piers washed away.\u00a0 I could see the camp, but there was no way to get to it.\u00a0 It did look quite derelict, no longer in use.\u00a0 Too much money would have to be spent on it to bring it up to standard.\u00a0 It stands now as a relic and a jog to the memory of all the people who through the years spent time there.\"IMG_7003\"<\/a> \"IMG_7004\"<\/a> \"IMG_7007\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One other little memory came back.\u00a0 I recalled that there was a white wooden signpost by the side of the road where we used to park in the 50s, advertising that the Retreat was well worth a visit by those who would travel a few more miles up the Glen.\u00a0\u00a0 What a surprise to see that there still is a sign to the Retreat.\u00a0A different sign now 50 or more years later, but it looks as if it was in the same place. \u00a0 That will help me find where to stop if ever I want to find Dalbog again.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7009\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time I visited the Angus Army Cadet Force camp at Dalbog in Glen Esk must have been more than\u00a0 50 years ago\u00a0 Not that I was ever a Cadet, but my father, Alf Coutts, \u00a0was the Sergeant Major in the Brechin Cadets and each spring and summer in the 1950s he would spend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-further"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2776"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2908,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions\/2908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}