I was contacted in July 2014 by Ian Wolstenholme who had discovered this website and contributed the following. I decided to put this all together on a separate page and then link it to the expeditions Ian was on.

Ian, I have made a couple of modifications, I recognise a couple of the photos so have included the location and I've tweaked the photos a bit and removed some scratches and dust marks.

SHS Adventures

My name is Ian Wolstenholme, and I was a member of the SHS in the ‘70s. I was on the Raasay 1974, Jura 1975, and Harris 1976 expeditions. The following are my ramblings and half memories from those joyous times spent off the North West coast of Scotland. Albeit somewhat damaged by Supermarket Australian red wine. I will also insert the photographs which could be from any of those 3 expeditions, but I will do my best to pinpoint them, however I apologise if I can’t remember names, locations etc. I can’t remember what happened last Monday either! Please feel free to comment/correct as appropriate. Excuse please the quality of the prints, these were taken with a cheap Kodak Instamatic camera half of them are printed on matte paper and half on Trifca Glossy media, and then left in my loft for the best part of 40 years.

IAN WOLSTENHOLME

 

 

 

 

 

OK, I think that this is Raasay, my picture depicts the islands Integrated Transport System

 

 

 

 

 

Raasay again possibly, I do take a photo with mainly sky?

[Looks a little mountainous to me, to be Raasay  but I've never been there. Anyone know? Ed.]

This is on Harris, looking back after the 1000' zig-zag path out of Rhenigadale. Ed.

 This is Raasay or Jura, because Lofty Lambert was not on our Harris expedition, and I’m sure it is Lofty with the woolly hat on. Further explanation: we found a discarded fishing net float on the shore, which was roughly rugby ball shaped, but with a hole through the middle where the net would’ve been. Naturally a game of rugby broke out with 10 or so of us, the pitch rising some 120ft right to left with an occasional bog or rocky outcrop. (What could possibly go wrong?) Dave Perritt is in the foreground and I think Tony Ormston at the back.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Dave Perritt making 100% sure that the summer storm would not adversely affect his Blacks of Greenock Icelandic Tent.

 

 

 

 

Soon Mallet envy set in as Brian Barnes (?) needs to ensure the safety of his group’s Icelandic.

 

 

 

Unknown location.

[Anyone got any ideas, not Rhenigidale so that leaves Raasay or Jura. Ed. ]

Capsize Drill! Personally I capsized before even leaving the shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Did you get your hair wet?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown view [Anyone?]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two views of Rhenigidale campsite from the 1976 Harris expedition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diving feet. John ‘Marine Boy’ Chasemore. (?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another unknown view. [Anyone know?]

OK, this definitely needs further qualification. I think (?) that this is Ian Carr testing a juvenile theory/law of physics. This is an extension of a theory that we had worked on before which involved 2 of us jumping off the roof of the local cricket pavilion each holding 2 corners of a decorators dust sheet. Here we see a valid scientific experiment to ascertain if a standard issue bivvy bag would have sufficient parachute like qualities to save you should you fall off a mountain or from an airplane.

Results

Humans           0

Gravity            1

Dave Perritt and the infamous Bivouac. (Angry local with ruined lawn just out of shot!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the Black Pearl!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jura I think where we helped coral and disinfect the local population. Then we treated the sheep.

Memories

Hopefully this stirs memories for others who experienced these expeditions as it did for me. What a perfect environment for practicing your social, intellectual and physical skills. Unlike the Government’s wishy-washy version, we truly were all in it together, and it made us better people.

We got the trains from Preston and slept in the luggage rack, corridor, under the seats, we felt sorry for those who got the train all the way from Euston or wherever, the roaring Napier Deltic Class 55 engine keeping you awake all night, wrecking the infrastructure for future Pendolinos and wrecking the atmosphere with its particulate output. Whatever you do don’t put your head out of the window! We jump off the train in Carstairs & touch Casters, nearly missing the departure! A pissed up wheeltapper at Glasgow misquoting Adolf Hitler’s 1934 Nurnburg address. “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Arsehole. Ich bin dieser Arsehole!” And then the stunning beauty and tranquillity of the Kyle of Localsh railway line, that’s where you started to leave real life behind, as CS Lewis would’ve said, “The Railway to Narnia”.

I can remember on one journey the train was broken/delayed at Glasgow (I think) and we had a 5 or 6 hour wait, so a bunch of us went to a concert Emerson Lake & Palmer or some such I think.

I recall one outbound journey where we stayed in a school hall near the port on the first night and I fell/was pushed into the harbour, the freezing water shock and my hiking boots nearly stopped me from swimming to shore. That evening all my stuff was drying on the heater in the school hall including all my £5.00 notes, all of which stayed U shaped and turned reddish so that I couldn’t spend them because all the shopkeepers thought they were fake.

One night a storm blew in so hard that the tide swell changed the shape of the windward coast, and I am sure that the SHS were instrumental in aiding the Ordnance Survey to adjust their maps accordingly. On Harris a huge boulder had dislodged and presented itself in the Rhenigidale village. The challenge was how to shift it. We set about devising complex strategies using levers, wedges and ropes etc, it would’ve taken a thousand people 10 years to shift it. The locals just lit a driftwood fire under the rock, super heated it and then poured seawater over it and watched as uneven rapid cooling flaked away pieces of the boulder. I bet it is half the size by now!!

I seem to remember one expedition where the food provisions truck got stuck in a ditch somewhere and we started our visit living largely off the land, whelks, winkles and limpets that otherwise would’ve been part of a scientific survey, were part of er… lunch. Heather soup, fern soup, couch grass soup, and seaweed soup were visitors to the menu that week. Funny though, it seems that slightly damp cornflakes and Kendal Mint Cake somehow made it through that disaster.

There was always music around the camps with fantastic instrumental virtuosity on display…………

But with the boys just singing “ti-bye ti-aye ti-bye ti-aye ti-bollock i-aye ti-bollock i-aye ti-boo!” Oddly I do still remember all those rude songs.

IAN WOLSTENHOLME 17th. July 2014