Come to our big Winter sale in Aboyne in Royal Deeside starting Friday 2oth and continuing through to Saturday 28th.

 The sale will offer great discounts on our retail stock including down jackets, waterproof jackets, fleeces, base layers, walking boots, snow boots etc. 

Brands in addition to our own include Rab, Helly Hansen, Odlo, Patagonia, Páramo, AKU, Meindl, Merrell, Hitech etc etc

We also want to clear our stock of Hilltrek one-off Lomond Jackets and Trousers, one-off and test Ventile jackets, trousers and smocks, fleeces etc. So there will be some great buys to be had.

I’m afraid that it is a retail sale only and not offered over our website -you have to visit us in beautiful Aboyne!

On a beautiful frosty Sunday I met one of our customers Dr Gordon Watt of Alford in the Keiloch Car park at Invercauld near Braemar wearing an earlier version of our Glencoe Double Ventile Jacket.

He estimated that the jacket, which was in pristine condition, was at least 20 years old.  

Although now in his 80′s Dr Watt has been an expert telemark skier, cross country skier and hillwalker.  The Glencoe Jacket, which he used both for walking and telemark skiing, has had minor refurbishment once in 20 years and had a modified moleskin collar.

Dr Watt obviously cares for his gear as he showed us an early Mountain Equipment Duvet jacket, at least as old as the Glencoe Jacket, which had little loss of down feathers. He also bought one of the early Páramo smocks from Hilltrek.

According do his daughter Dr Watt is a bit of a outdoor jacket and gear fan. He was using a Garmin GPS to navigate along the path to Alltdourie.

A man after my own heart!

Bill Brooker, one of Aberdeen’s most prominent climbers,  died late last year at the age of 79.

Along with Tom Patey, he was one of a small group of climbers from Aberdeen who pioneered new climbing routes  in the Cairngorms in the 1950s and challenged the dominance of climbers from Glasgow in the Scottish climbing scene.

As well a leading mountaineer, Bill was also prominent in Aberdeen and Scottish mountaineering clubs and organisations.  He was president, and later honorary president, of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. Bill was also involved in the North East Mountain Trust and the Mountaineering Council of Scotland.

He was one of our customers and, although we did not see him in recent years due to his illness, his wife Margaret and daughter occasionally visited our shop in Aboyne.

If you want to find out more about Bill there is much material on-line as well as written material.

One of the best on-line articles is  First and Last Climbs by Dave Craig  in the fine Footless Crow Blog.

Adam Watson’s excellent book  ’It’s a fine day for the hill’ recently published describes the Aberdeen climbing scene in the 1950s and has many references to Bill. 

His prominence in the Scottish Climbing is highlighted in the BBC  website in a background article to the The Great Climb.

There are also references to Bill’s in Scottish Mountaineering Club website and the Aberdeen University Lairig Club   on wikipedia.

You can also read an obiturary in the Scotsman

Bill’s exploits will be remembered by many.