Bert Dobbie - engineer, mountaineer and Scottish Skiiing Pioneer, 1924 - 2018
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| Bert Dobbie |
Robert Dobbie, known as Bert, was an engineer, mountaineer
and skiing pioneer. He died last Saturday in St Margaret’s Hospice, after a
short illness, aged 93. The last time I saw him he was watching the opening
ceremony from South Korea, where the world’s best skiers were gathering for the
Winter Olympics. In Scotland Bert was one of the people who built the early ski
tows and ski huts for a fledgling sport, and for many years led the team that
ensured the safety of skiers and evacuated the injured from Glencoe.
He was brought up in Maryhill, close to the Maryhill PublicBaths and Wash House, in a large family with nine brothers and sisters. He was
born on 12th July 1924 to Robert, who worked as a leerie, and
Margaret. As well as running the home she worked in a chip shop, out in the
morning to peel potatoes, and again at night to sell fish and chips.
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| Bert Dobbie, skiing in Glencoe, 1945 |
He started his working life as a boy in Maryhill delivering newspapers
to the soldiers in Maryhill Barracks, earning tips by discreetly smuggling in cigarettes
amongst their more mundane supplies. After leaving North Kelvinside School, aged
14 he began working in a grocer’s shop in Cleveden. He played the bugle in the
local Boys Brigade, and early climbing experience for Maryhill boys could be
found on the high dykes or on the rough walls of a local stable, the dung
midden at the bottom providing a soft, if unappealing landing if you fell.
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| Bert Dobbie as a young man |
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| Hillwalking in Scotland, always big groups of men and women out in the hills together |
As a young man he started walking in the Campsies andKilpatrick Hills, where in 1938 he met his lifelong friend Tom McGuinness. Together
they would cut their teeth as rock climbers on the walls of The Whangie. Other
favourite walks were around Balmaha where, as a strong swimmer, Bert would
often head out into Loch Lomond to retrieve a boat to take him and his
companions out to the islands. Ever practical, he and his friends would later
build their own kayaks to spend weekends out on Loch Lomond. He was a great
lover of sleeping out in the open air and told me of numerous dry nooks and
crannies to doss down in on many a Scottish mountainside.
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| At the top of The Cobbler, early 1940s |
Later he became a member of the Lomond Mountaineering Club
and on Saturday mornings, with members of the Creagh Dhu Club, they would often
clamber onto the back of a Bryson’s milk lorry at Anniesland Cross, as it
headed towards Campbeltown. Getting off near the Rest and Be Thankful, TheCobbler and the Arrochar Alps were soon within their reach. Sleeping out
overnight, they would catch the lorry on the road back on Sunday night. The
driver would get a shilling for his trouble and in the back of the lorry they
could dip their tea cans into the tanks for some fresh milk.
During the war Bert worked as a boilermaker on the Clyde, at
the Clan Line Steamers Repairing Workshops. Occasionally this would involve
passage on the ships as they went up and down to Liverpool or further afield. At
weekends he was always back in the hills. Whilst his friend Tom could
discreetly cut and fashion metal at his work in Barr and Stroud’s, to make
nails for their climbing boots or create his own version of a carabiner, Bert
would fashion ice axes and crampons in his workplace as their climbing abilities
grew.
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| Dressed in tweeds and clambering up a rockface |
On the night of the Clydebank Blitz, Bert and Tom were staying
in a caravan at Halfway and became aware of the extent of what was happening
the next morning as they came across families fleeing their homes. They gave up
their caravan to some of them and spent a week off work helping the Scouts
organisation set up tents and fires for those made homeless and forced to live
under canvas for the first time in their lives.
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| Skiing in Glencoe |
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| Preparing the equipment |
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| En route to Skye, 1945. Left to right this is Ian Martn, Grace Morris, Bill Forrest, Margaret Morris, Rod Urquart, Willie Gordon, Anne Williams, Cath Simpson, Bert Dobbie and Tom McGuinness |
When heavy falls of new snow made climbing unsafe, members
of the mountaineering clubs became the first people to ski regularly in
Glencoe. The favoured spot was on Meall a’Bhuridh, above Ba Cottage on RannochMoor. Ba Cottage was a substantial empty building over two floors, owned by the
Black Mount Estate and it became a regular “doss” for the mountaineering clubs.
After the Second World War ex-army skis, boots and other equipment meant that
more working-class people from the cities took part in the climbing and skiing,
and their popularity as recreation grew.
Climbers from the Ba Cottage were known to poach the
occasional deer, and in 1948 the gamekeepers decided that they had had enough.
Occasional poaching was not unusual, particularly as the war years had led to
an increase in deer numbers. However, Bert remembered that things came to a
head after one of his companions did some poaching with a German machine gun
that he had brought back as a souvenir from the war. In response the estate
gamekeepers felt a line had been crossed and burnt down the Ba Cottage.
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| The famous Ba Cottage, before it was burned down, skis at the ready |
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| Camping in Glencoe, though to avoid carrying excess weight most nights were spent bivouacking, rather than under canvas |
Undaunted, temporary camps of climbers grew up three miles further
up into Glencoe. Using salvaged material from the Ba Cottage, and some
tarpaulins from a railway yard in Tyndrum, Bert supervised his colleagues in
building a new doss for the Lomond Mountaineering Club members from an old
sheep fank, at White Corries near to where the Glencoe Ski Centre car park now sits.
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| Building the "sheep fank doss" in Glencoe, left to right Archie McFarlane, A.N.Other?, Bill Forrest, Andrew Wynd, Hugh Forrest, Ian Martin, Andrew Pryde, Tom McGuinness. Photo taken by Bert Dobbie |
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| Bert Dobbie re-visiting the site of former doss of the Lomond Mountaineering Club in Glencoe last year |
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| Loaded up with climbing gear on the old Bergans backpacks and heading out on the motorbike |
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| Looking towards the Hornli Ridge on the Matterhorn, 1949 |
After the war Bert started motorbiking on an old Triumph,
and as well as giving him the freedom to go further afield in Scotland, he
undertook some expeditions into Europe. One of my favourite photographs of his,
from July 1949, shows him eyeing up the Hornli Ridge and the north face of the
Matterhorn. As well as the Matterhorn, with the Lomond Club he also tackled
Mont Blanc, the Eiger, and Picos de Europa in Spain. On one of his trips to
Europe on the bike, he was refused entry to a restaurant for not wearing a tie.
He went back outside and returned having ripped up an old cloth to fashion into
a makeshift tie. When he found himself being admitted, he tore it off in
disgust and walked out. This attitude of walking away from stuffiness and rules
was a lifelong characteristic.
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| Skiing in the Campsies in the 1940s, past the Carbeth huts |
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| Blackrock Cottage in Glencoe, which shows the extension they built here in the 1950s to store their ski equipment |
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| Skiing at Ben Alder 1949 |
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| First ski tow being built in Glencoe, 1956 |
In the 1960s he learned to become an accomplished seaman,
sailing on a boat owned by his friend Glen Perry. Among his companions his
excellent seamanship was greatly respected, whether in races or on trips to the
islands. Later he was regularly deployed as coxswain on his cousin Jack
Williamson’s boat. He developed an intimate knowledge of every rock, skerry and
hazard on the treacherous waterways of the West coast and around the Sound of Mull. Years later in their 80s and 90s he still enjoyed an annual sailing trip
up this way with old friends. One frustration in later years was that whenever
they approached St Kilda, the weather turned against them and stopped them ever
being able to disembark there.
Glencoe remained his true home from home, and for years he
was a familiar face on the ski slopes there. When Tom McGuinness became manager
of the ski resort in the late 1960s Bert was recruited to lead the Ski Rescue team
at weekends. Alan Thomson’s book on Glencoe describes Bert as “the forceful
leader” of the formative Glencoe Ski Rescue team, working there to ensure the
safety of skiers and climbers over several decades. Their training came from
years of personal experience on the hills and many of the casualties they dealt
with over the years had suffered major trauma. In the early days friendly
doctors would supply them with vials of morphine to give to any badly injured
skiers or climbers, to help get them off the hills. The safety pin used on one
occasion through an unconscious skier’s tongue to stop it slipping back and
choking him as he was transported down the slope, is probably a technique that
physicians no longer use.
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| Bert Dobbie, second on the left in the Glencoe Ski Rescue team |
In his 70s he met my grandmother, Edna Climie, who was also widowed.
Their friendship grew and led to them living happily together for over 20
years. The pair of them were never at home, and a morning run in the car was as
likely to end up in Norwich as it was Drymen.
In later life he still took any opportunity to get into the
great outdoors. A group of old friends met twice a year to stay in the GlenBrittle Hut in Skye and head to Coire Lagan in the Cuillins, or to go on
sailing trips. When these outings started they called themselves the “500 Club”,
the combined total of the ages of the seven men getting together, but as it got
closer to becoming the “600 Club” they were still getting out to the hills
together. Bert continued to keep his orthopaedic surgeon's busy, as he returned to ski again in Glencoe in his 80s after getting knee replacement surgery.
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| Bert Dobbie 1924 - 2018 |
Latterly he became an attentive carer for my gran, after she
developed dementia. Despite his own recent illness, he managed to continue
looking after her in their own home until only a few days before he succumbed
to the consequences of his exposure to asbestos in his early working life.
Bert is of the generation of Scottish men and women who felt
that we all had a right to use the land around us. Self-taught and highly
skilled, these early adventurers did not shout about their exploits, but are
the people who made the outdoors great for us all. For us no family gathering will be the same now without Bert's songs, laughter and fantastic stories.
Here are a couple of photos from February 2018 of the ruins of Ba Cottage, Glencoe Ski Centre and from Meall a'Bhuiridh. I went for a walk, taking Bert's old Bergan backpack to some familiar haunts. Funnily enough, the only deer that I spotted were above Ba Cottage, who obviously hadn't heard some of these old stories.
