TGO Challenge 2015: Cheese & Wine Party

2014’s CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Sipping fine wines, scoffing tasty cheeses over 2,000 feet up in the freezing cold, in the middle of sod-all, with like minded souls in the finest hill country in Great Britain? Has this piqued your interest at all?

Lord Elpus and I have been hosting Cheese & Wine parties on the TGO Challenge for quite a few years. Each year we issued the invite on the TGO Message Board and if Challengers felt it was close to their proposed route they could pop along and join in. It was the luck of the draw if the party was to be on their route.

But in more recent years we have been publishing the party’s date and location a little earlier, so that Challengers could actually plan their routes to take in the parties. This still did not please some folk, as they had already planned their routes in advance of even hearing if they had a place on the Challenge!

So, with this in mind, this year Lord Elpus has issued 2015’s party invitation on the day all application forms were due in at Challenge Control. He posted the following message and invitation on the Challenge Message Board:

 

With all the entries safely gathered in, and the nights drawing in, Challengers old and new are thinking of the brighter days of May, and routes that they may wander across Scotland ... but, even as the Landranger maps are spread out they hesitate.
Why? Because they do not yet know where and when the social highlight of the Challenge will take place.
Hesitate no more. The invitations are printed, and here is yours, ready to prop on your mantelpiece.

CHEESE & WINE INVITATION 2015 [COURTESY PHIL LAMBERT] CLICK TO ENLARGE

 

It will be interesting to see who accepts our invitation this year. ALL Challengers are welcome. Here are some pictures of past parties so you can see what to expect.

2010 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

2010: Held at the headwaters of the Waters of Eunich. We started at a tropical 2 deg C and then it rained and dropped below freezing with light snow flurries. You have to be hard to be a Cheese & Wine participant. The weather might not have been brilliant, but the C&Wers were wonderful. There was almost a couple of drownings.

2012 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The 2012 C&W party was held between Loch Treig and Loch Ossian. We were blessed this year by Val & Dave Machin ferrying in balloons and wonderful party food and wines! The weather was bright, sunny and freezing cold. The company was wonderful.

2013 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The 2013 C&W party was held at the very top of Glen Tromie. Again the weather was kind but again, it was bloody freezing! I wasn’t feeling too good (I had a kidney transplant a few weeks later) and baled out early. Again, Val and Dave magically produced wonderful party food & wines before walking off back homeward in the gloaming; They got home in the small hours.

2014 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The 2014 C&W party was held near the Chalybeate Spring in the midst of the proposed turbines for the massive Stronelairg wind farm in the Monadh Liath. We had a fantastic turn-out – fourteen or fifteen Challengers. Again, the weather was wonderful – sunny and warm (ish) to start with, turning to a wonderful moonlit night.

During the night someone built a henge close by…