I've talked about my dad and the important part that he has played in my life in terms of creating a set of values and a strength to deal with the various ups and downs that life has thrown at me.
I was asking about the other people from our family past and he told me about his grandfather. Dad's grandad was a fisherman who worked with his brother fishing off Harris in the North West of Scotland. Thoughout the fishing season they went out every day in whatever the Minch threw at them and caught cod and ling. At the end of each of trip they took the fish, salted the catch and put it in storage.
As the season went on they collected more and more fish in their boxes until the end of the season. Now at the time, mid 1800's apparently the Germans loved salted cod so he and his brother set off in there boat and navigated there way around the north coast of Scotland through some of Scotland's most challenging waters and over the North Sea. Once they reached Denmark they would head through the Kiel Canal which took them into the Baltic Sea from where they could access the major waterways into Germany to sell the fish in Hamburg and other markets in that area.
My dad found a book which recorded all of the sales and where the fish was sold. It even told a story of a storm that they sailed into during which the two brothers working the boat didn't see or speak to each other for 5 days. The remarkable thing was that there were no GPS's and they sailed by the sun and stars - now we need a GPS to home after a bike ride! Despite their lack of equipment they always made it back home and maybe they should be the first winners of Ironman Poland!! They made there money for the entire year on those trips and I suppose were market leaders in the export trade, European economic trading partners established by a couple of boys from Harris. George Osbourne eat your heart out!
His other Grandfather was also a fisherman but he used to hitch a lift on a boat from Scalpay, a wee island off Harris, over to Torridon. From there he would walk to Wick to pick up work on a fishing boat. Can you imagine that commute! The way home was longer as instead of travelling cross country he needed to stick to the coast because of the number of robbers lurking on the shorter mainland route. He was carrying his entire earnings for the year and to lose it all would have been a disaster.
Both grandad's had small crofts and kept sheep which needed to be looked after. That's where my great grandmothers came to the party looking after the croft while their respective husbands were at sea. Life must have been pretty tough!
We are lucky in that we do these races to test ourselves and give us targets to keep fit. 150 years ago it was a matter of survival and I would imagine the test on the body of sailing across the North Sea in a small unpowered fishing boat was significantly more than 140 miles of an Ironman with no energy bars or power drinks.
So maybe just maybe Ironman is in the Macleod Genes!!
Just for the record I spent an hour doing circuits first thing and then went swimming at lunchtime. The faster lane was busy with people taking approximately one minute to swim one length. Now I'm not fast but I had to pass people every two lengths which eventually became impossible when a few more joined the lane to backstroke their way slowly up and down the fast lane. It didn't frustrate me at all.......
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