Overstory

slow social media

@pfooti · 2026-06-22 · travel

June 21: Aberdeen Highland Games

Today we didn’t do any real road tripping, we headed over to Hazlehead Park pretty early to go to the Aberdeen Highland Games. I’d been looking forward to this for months now, I have an unironic love of county fairs, livestock shows, and craft expos, so I figured this would be similar but with feats of strength and speed as well. Did not disappoint.

This is the Weight for Height competition. It’s like high jump where they keep raising the bar, except you’re tossing a weight straight up. Happy to say: it didn’t bonk anyone. Sad to say: my camera was kind of a jinx, where every time I tried to get a shot, the thrower missed the bar, so I stopped.
This is the Weight for Height competition. It’s like high jump where they keep raising the bar, except you’re tossing a weight straight up. Happy to say: it didn’t bonk anyone. Sad to say: my camera was kind of a jinx, where every time I tried to get a shot, the thrower missed the bar, so I stopped.

I was a little surprised that there were none of the usual county faire things (fare?) - no sheep or animal husbandry judging, no dioramas made from beans. Just dancing, piping (solo and in corps), heavy and light competition. The heavies were in three categories and the star of the show - Women’s, Youth (18-25), and Open (Men 25+). The categories were the same, but the weights were different; the Men’s Open weight over the bar was about twice what the Women threw. Impressive all around, and the best caber tosser was a woman.

Watch on YouTube ↗

The video isn’t the overall best tosser (by the judge at least), but this guy won the Open Heavy with his toss, and the log is a lot bigger in that category. I didn’t get a good shot of the female winner, sorry. The way caber tossing works is: it’s not a distance thing like a bunch of the other feats of strength are, instead it’s for form and elegance. You have to pick up the caber, get it balanced, run forward to get enough momentum, and then toss it up in the air with enough rotation so that when the far end plants in the ground there’s a combination of rotation and forward momentum so it goes over. You’re judged by the angle that the log lands at relative to you (noon being the best).

I learned a lot about Tug of War in a short period of time. This is Grampian style - you can tell because there are six tuggers. Amateur style has eight. Both styles have a max team weight, some basic rules, and Amateur style allows specialized footwear whereas Grampian style you just wear workboots. The Cornhill team (shown above) won both categories pretty handily. The really fascinating thing here is that a single end of Tug of War can last quite some time with nothing visibly happening - they just lay there, dug in, pulling. Then all of a sudden one team falls over. I couldn’t get enough. I was also lucky enough to pick Cornhill as my team from the jump, it’s always easy to cheer for a winning team.
I learned a lot about Tug of War in a short period of time. This is Grampian style - you can tell because there are six tuggers. Amateur style has eight. Both styles have a max team weight, some basic rules, and Amateur style allows specialized footwear whereas Grampian style you just wear workboots. The Cornhill team (shown above) won both categories pretty handily. The really fascinating thing here is that a single end of Tug of War can last quite some time with nothing visibly happening - they just lay there, dug in, pulling. Then all of a sudden one team falls over. I couldn’t get enough. I was also lucky enough to pick Cornhill as my team from the jump, it’s always easy to cheer for a winning team. (scottishtugofwar.com)

There was also a good array of tents, food, stuff for sale, and odd demos (the science center had a science tent, the christians had a “free books” tent (they didn’t mention that the books were about Bible stuff). I wouldn’t have minded a little spinning and weaving action, like a sheep to shawl contest, but maybe those are elsewhere. They did, on the other hand, have a volunteer race, meaning anyone from the audience could compete in the sprint (they did one men, one women, and one special for the dads).

Watch on YouTube ↗

I have to say, the volume in person is not really captured in the video - this is where they all marched in together as a unified band. Also? I’m going to have Scotland the Brave stuck in my head for about six or seven lifetimes. Overall: highly recommend. I also really appreciated how the competitors were all pretty obviously amateurs. There wasn’t one super-bulky dude running around winning all the competitions. There was one guy in all the light events (dash, middle and long distance running, jumps high, long, and triple) who came in dead last. He was also obviously a good bit older than any other competitor, but he did it anyway. He’s kind of my hero right now.

Dinner was locally farmed pork chops, plus a sautee of cabbage, leeks and garlic (I really like cooked cabbage, it rules; this was the other half of a cabbage head I cooked up with sausage a few days ago), and some skillet potatoes. I’m getting better at cooking in the RV - I can do a three dish meal if I juggle which two are on heat at any given time, and although I’ve had some close calls, the only true disaster-spill was some ground coffee. That really was a disaster though, my Hydrangea coffee is a precious commodity. The stuff I got earlier at Coffee Apothecary is very good though. Way better than the grocery store beans I thought I was going to have to make do with.
Dinner was locally farmed pork chops, plus a sautee of cabbage, leeks and garlic (I really like cooked cabbage, it rules; this was the other half of a cabbage head I cooked up with sausage a few days ago), and some skillet potatoes. I’m getting better at cooking in the RV - I can do a three dish meal if I juggle which two are on heat at any given time, and although I’ve had some close calls, the only true disaster-spill was some ground coffee. That really was a disaster though, my Hydrangea coffee is a precious commodity. The stuff I got earlier at Coffee Apothecary is very good though. Way better than the grocery store beans I thought I was going to have to make do with. (hydrangea.coffee)

I tried to look up some of the results from the games online, and while there are multiple sources about the results from the piping competition, and the Scottish Tug of War Association’s amazing website (linked above) had the results of the Tug, there was nothing from the Heavy or Light competition. So I can’t give you names from the winners, sorry. Still, it was a lot of fun. Tomorrow, we drive up to Inverness, stop in at a Falconry center and a battlefield, and hopefully (dun dun dunnnh) get a spot near the water and don’t spoil our run of finding a campsite without needing a reservation or anything.

Conversation happens inside — sign in to Overstory to read and write comments.