THERE’S no use sitting home waiting for something to happen: you have to go out and make it happen.
That’s Bill McAdam’s philosophy - and as it applies to his main hobby, walking, it has taken him all over the Highlands.

Bill pictured above Loch Kernsary, near Poolewe

For Bill, who lives in Lochalsh Road, has been secretary of the Great Glen Walking Club since it was founded in late 1995. The club has around 140 members and 15 leaders, and it organises walks every weekend year-round with extra evening walks in summer. They also run courses in map and compass-reading as well as first aid.
Perhaps five or six times a year the club goes on a bus trip, usually to the west coast, but they also been to Ben Rinnes, Balmoral and Ballater.

In October there is a weekend outing to Killin in Perthshire. Such trips are a good opportunity for club members of all standards and abilities to socialise. An Invernessian, 68-year-old Bill went to Inverness High, then known as “the Techie“. As a boy he went to the Lifeboys and later was a member of the Coy 5 East Church Boys Brigade.
He spent his National Service years in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders serving in Korea and Aden.
And when he returned, love blossomed when he met up again with Margaret, who’d been at school with him. When in 1960 they married the couple lived in Rose Street for a couple of years before moving to Lochalsh Road where they have been since 1964.

Bill’s health forced an early retirement from working in local government in ’86 and a couple of years later he saw an item in the Courier about a branch of the Ramblers being formed, and he decided that was for him.
“I had always enjoyed walking as a teenager and I played badminton and Welfare League football in the late 1950s,” Bill said, “but had never done any serious walking.“ He also got company colours in the army for playing hockey and cross country running.
“They picked me for the hockey team because they thought it was like shinty and would be easy for me.
“Neither Margaret nor I drive, so the club was a good way for us to get out of town to walk further afield.”

After seven years the Ramblers members decided to go their own way independent of the national organisation, and so the Great Glen Walkers Club was formed.
Then after being defunct a few years the Ramblers re-formed. The two clubs work happily alongside each other and the vast majority of members have dual membership, allowing them maximum flexibility in their choice of walks.
“The Great Glen tends to take their walks at a more leisurely pace,” says Bill, “we go at the pace of the slowest.”

However, that is not to say it is necessarily always a soft option: a bus trip to the Kinlochewe/ Aultbea area last month saw some intrepid members cover 20 miles over quite rough country in around eight hours, including lunch break!
Others did rather less ambitious walks and Bill himself led the party of “C” walkers round the beautiful Loch Kernsary on a path maintained by the Scottish Rights of Way Society.

As a leader he goes on club walks in advance to check the safety and suitability of the route. Getting out and about walking, lets him practise another of his hobbies, photography. As if being at the hub of such a busy club was not enough, Bill works at least a couple of days a month for the Highland Hospice.
This involves him travelling all over the Highlands, from Thurso and Fort William to Grantown and Forres, collecting from and delivering stock to their eight charity shops.