Perthshire

Episode 7.6
23 March 1989



1  2  3 4 5  6


Contestants Valerie Hess, ‘unemployed but busy’ from Cheshire, and cousin Edward Bailey, petroleum company representative from Shropshire.
Hint to the Treasure Still on top
Start Position Near Loch Tummel
Clue 1 Where brose is boozy, they’re having a ball under the ducal corbie-steps. Take steps yourself to reel off with Douglas. 1
Leads to Blair Castle – on tartan sash worn by Highland dancer
Clue 2 Halfway between two leaps – soldier’s and salmon – something’s afloat near a powerhouse. Ask outdoor types from the Butter mansion to drum up a voyage. 2
Leads to Faskally Wayside Centre – on an oil-drum in the middle of the river
Clue 3 In the town with a Chichester parallel, find the successor to a Thespian tent, and seek out the venerable seanachaidh. 3
Leads to Pitlochry Festival Theatre – with story-teller
Clue 4 Use woods to reach the vale of Irish tea, where 18 squeeze into 9, and sink one in the marsh. 4
Leads to Strathtay Golf Course – on no 4 hole
Clue 5 Across Wade’s Great North Road, the Paradise Lost poet offers a taste of what Mackenzie’s islanders had galore. 5
Leads to Edradour Distillery – glass of whisky in still room
Result The contestants ran out of time on the final clue


Notes
● Annabel wore a tartan cape, and Graham and Frankie wore kilts.
1 Atholl Brose is a pudding made from whipped cream and Drambuie (where brose is boozy) which leads to Blair Atholl, and Blair Castle (ducal corbie-steps, where ‘corbie steps’ is a Scottish term for the steps formed up the sides of the gable by breaking the coping into short horizontal beds). Annabel lands and runs towards the castle entrance where a piper is playing. “There’s a bagpipe blower,” she exclaims. Inside, in the ballroom, a group of Scottish country dancers are performing (they’re having a ball), and Valerie and Edward attempt to describe the Douglas tartan to Annabel. After checking some dancers’ kilts, she finds the clue on a woman dancer’s tartan sash.
2 The Butter family, long associated with Pitlochry, live at Cluniemore (the Butter mansion), which is near a hydroelectric power station and a salmon leap. Nearby is Faskally Wayside Centre, where schoolchildren on an adventure course (outdoor types) are paddling oil-drum rafts across the river. Annabel helps paddle one of the rafts (drum up a voyage) and retrieves the clue from another oil drum floating in the middle of the river.
3 Like Chichester, Pitlochry has a Festival Theatre which, in Pitlochry’s case, began in a marquee (a successor to a thespian tent). When Annabel arrives she finds a children’s performance underway in the foyer. The clue is in the hand of the seanachaidh (pronounced “shannaker”, the Gaelic storyteller), an old man with a shepherd’s crook.
4 With so many golf references in the clue, Valerie, Edward and Kenneth quickly identify the 9-hole Strathtay golf course (Strath = vale or valley, tay = Irish tea?) and send Annabel there. When she lands, she and the crew climb aboard an electric golf buggy and drive – with Annabel at the wheel – to ‘The Marsh’, hole number four. She sinks a putt (sink one in the marsh) and finds the clue in the hole.
5 The helicopter flies across one of General Wade’s Military Roads to Milton of Edradour (Milton wrote ‘Paradise Lost’), two miles east of Pitlochry and home of the Edradour Distillery, Scotland’s smallest. The time ran out just as Annabel entered the still room. The treasure, a glass of whisky, was on one of the stills (still on top).





Information © David Hodges, 2003, with corrections by Martin Underwood, 2010

Page design © Martin Underwood, 2014

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