Successful Days Contesting at North Berwick for Tweedvale

Early August, Saturday 6^th, saw the band travel to North Berwick to participate in the Royal Burgh of North Berwick Highland Games at Recreation Park, North Berwick. The North Berwick contest was played out in dry sunny conditions that brought out large crowds to view the pipe band contests. The band had been drawn to play 6^th out of 8 entered bands but due to withdrawals ended up playing 4^th out of 6 bands in the Grade 4A March Strathspey and Reel contest.

Tweedvale Pipe Band’s performance was much improved on the previous weeks display at the Scottish though there were still one or two issues. More annoying though was the loudspeaker positioned so close to the band competition circle that the commentary for the dog handling display being held in another part of the arena was clearly audible by the band DURING the bands performance – it was incredible distracting!! Notwithstanding this distraction, the band successfully completed their performance and spent the rest of the afternoon around the arena waiting for the march past. When the results were announced, Tweedvale Pipe Band found that they had been awarded 4^th place in the open contest winning the RSPBA Lothian and Borders Shield. The winning band was Kirkcaldy & District. A closer analysis of the result showed that the band had been placed 2^nd and 3^rd by the piping judges, 5^th by the drumming judge and 3^rd by the ensemble judge. North Berwick is unique in that there is a “contest within a contest”, confined to bands from the Lothian and Borders area. In the Grade 4 confined contest, the band won third place and lifted the Craighead Trophy.

Speaking about the North Berwick result, Tweedvale Pipe Major Bruce Gillie said “The North Berwick performance was better by far than the Scottish, but still showed the band prone to slips and errors through lack of concentration. We can do better.”

Details of the Day

Contest venue – Recreation Park, North Berwick.

Tunes played:
Grade 4 & NJ MSR – P/M Donald McLean’s Farewell to Oban, Men of Argyll, Molly Connell, The Keel Row, Lexy McAskill and Flora, Mrs MacLeod of MacLeod.

Number of Pipers – 11.

Number of Side Drummers – 3 in Grade 4 & NJ MSR.

Number of Bass Drummers – 1.

Number of Tenor Drummers – 3.

The full results of the Bathgate Pipe Band Contest Grade 4 & NJ MSR contest can be found here.