Nic, left, and his fellow founder members, gather outside Lagangarbh, Glencoe, during the SMMC's inaugural meet in January 1981
Banishing those weekend blues
THE Scottish Midweek Mountaineering Club was the brainchild of Nic Bullivant. It was 1980 and Nic, a young countryside ranger in Fife, was finding it very difficult to enjoy regular mountaineering club trips because they were always held at weekends when he was often working. It occurred to him that there must be other people who could get away during the week, so why not try to get together?
As a member of Perth JMCS, he had experienced some great mountaineering huts and meets, but realised that, if the new midweek group he had in mind wanted to take advantage of the huts it would have to be through a constituted club. With a grant from the Scottish Sports Council and advice from a local community worker, Nic drafted a constitution, booked Lagangarbh in Glencoe for an Inaugural Meet, did various bits of advertising, and the SMMC was on its way.
The inaugural meet, in January 1981, attracted some stalwart supporters: Andy Cunningham from Stirling, Graham Openshaw, Steve Nunn from Aberfoyle, Andrew Campbell and Robert Cunningham. In thin snow conditions, sunshine and gale, they undertook a traverse of Buachaille Etive Beag. In the evening they adopted an interim constitution, and got back on the hill the next day, climbing Stob Dearg of Buchaille Etive Mor by the left-hand edge of Coire na Tulaich.
That constitution hasn’t changed much since then. Instead of a chairman, the club now elects a president, who currently serves for two years. The tenure of other officers, including the meets and membership secretaries and treasurer, have never been time-limited, so they serve until they feel they need a break.
The club adopted a standard format of one residential meet and one day meet per month throughout the year. Being a Scottish club with no intentional geographic location, it wasn’t possible to do the regular club night thing. Contact between members was encouraged by publishing a contact list, detailing members’ availability, aspirations, experience, and transport and gear that could be shared, as well as contact details.The whole aim of the club, the priority among members and the bias of the club’s functions and
constitution is towards the promotion of mountain activity. There is also a deep-seated tendency to indulge in coffee shops at every opportunity.
One of the club’s most satisfying aspects is how it has empowered members by offering a gateway, enabling them to broaden their experience and skills. It has helped novice walkers to take increasingly confident steps to Scotland’s finest mountaineering experiences in the most iconic locations. Aspirant climbers have been taken safely up their first routes tied-on to more able and skilled members. Those keen to learn their mountain craft have found willing instructors during days on the hill.
Members are fortunate in seeing the hills at their best and quietest, free from the crowds of weekends.
The club’s first overseas trip was to the Alps in September 1983, with Andy Cunningham, Dave Routledge and ANO driving there. Nic flew and bivvied in a wood outside Chamonix until they all met up. Traverses of the Courtes and the Midi-Plan were the highlights, but they had to retreat to near Geneva, when the snowline came down to the campsite, and climbed on polished limestone, at Saleve.
Foreign action increased over the years, as smaller groups of climbers and walkers have visited the Ecrins, Burgundy, Turkey, Spain, Norway, and elsewhere.
In recent years, groups have enjoyed the via ferrati of the Italian Dolomites and ice climbing and ski touring in Norway.
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THE original contact list evolved into a short newsletter, but was then transformed by the editorship of Wolf Gruellich, into the Midweeker,
a monthly polemic on Scottish mountain issues, which also carried club reports and calling notices for meets.
Chief among the Midweeker’s targets was the Cairngorm Chairlift Company – which gave Nic some uncomfortable moments, since he was working for the company at the time.
Subsequent editors developed the Midweeker into a quarterly organ, delivered by email, and carrying sections about Forthcoming Meets, Members’ Comments, and Meet
Reports, all enlivened by colour photos taken during meets.
At the 2018 AGM, it was agreed to replace the original club website with a much expanded and interactive new one, with the Midweeker, from issue 109 onwards, being integrated into the new website, thereby creating a single source for information about the club and its activities.
In the early days of the midweek club it was envisaged that it could become a
movement. Think of all the people who would be able to take advantage of it: shift workers, such as health workers, hotel workers, oil workers
on leave, unemployed people . . . and, if they weren’t interested in mountaineering, they might take inspiration and start their own midweek clubs for whatever they were interested in.
The club never lived up to those early expectations and has never felt the need to subdivide into regional groupings.
Membership grew steadily, from 38 in 1984 to near 100 and, in recent years settled at between 50 and 60, growing since the Covid pandemic to 70.
Originally, the club was a repository for rangers, firemen (once a whole of one of the watches of one brigade), policemen, hotel workers, a few ministers, an airline pilot, journalists, oil workers, a coastguard, a mountain guide, and all sorts of self-employed oddballs. Despite expectations, unemployed people never made up a significant proportion of our membership, perhaps being too preoccupied with getting a job.
Now, the growth in the population of fit retired people has provided the club with many active members. Even as they wind down they are still with us, walking, skiing, cycling and climbing – a few into their fit eighties.
One of the most successful of recent developments is the well-established Thursday indoor climbing session at Edinburgh International Climbing Centre, of which
members of 60-plus are significant enthusiasts.
Other more social developments since the end of lockdown are the establishment of a popular Christmas meet with communal meal and a summer BBQ meet. We have also decided to trial occasional ‘regional’ pub nights, with the first,
in Edinburgh’s Cafe Royal in February, being
well attended.
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This is an edited and updated version of Nic Bullivant’s original club history, written
last century!
The Bat Trophy
A quirky club development came about as a result of an incident in April, 1987. At the time, when Nic was supposed to be chairing the club’s AGM, in Lagangarbh, a fellow member was bravely holding him in a massive leader peel from the cornice on Two-step Corner, on the Ben. They had meant to be climbing Number Two Gully Buttress but lost their way in the clag. They gamely clawed their way up this harder route, to find the cornice was not frozen. A series of shaky abseils later, they passed the CIC Hut at about 11pm, where a resident was heard to ask if this was the Scottish Midnight Mountaineering Club. First call was to the police station to say they were back, just as an officer was taking details from the club members at Lagangarbh.
The upshot was the inauguration of the Bat Trophy, awarded on the whim of the president, to the member who hung around at night. A ceramic trophy, complete with helmeted bat, was commissioned. Despite their epic episode on the Ben, Nic and partner were beaten to the first award of the trophy by the minister of a German-speaking congregation in Edinburgh who managed to sit out all night on the Five Sisters of Kintail when clocks went back in the autumn.
Bat points became an institution in the club, and some members took a perverse pleasure in collecting them. In 2018, the original bat, showing much wear and tear, was retired. His duties were handed over to a very handsome replacement, the work of sculptor Alan Beattie-Herriot.
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