Inverness Highland Games will return to its historical home of the Northern Meeting Park to avoid the soggy fate of the event when staged at the city’s Bught Park last summer.
The games will be scaled down to a one-day occasion, but be integrated with the Inverness Tattoo and Armed Forces Day which are on the same day – July 24. City councillors have heeded a plea from the authority’s events organiser, Gerry Reynolds, who said the switch would also save precious finances.
He told members of the city committee, meeting at the town house yesterday, that Bught Park, which suffered badly from heavy downpours last year, simply was not suited to wet weather events.
Projecting images from the time of a quagmire of an entrance to the Bught, he said it was unfair on local traders paying for stands and for the many visitors who ended up queuing in muddy puddles.
“Immediately after the games I wrote to my managers, basically saying that I thought the time was right to move,” Mr Reynolds told councillors.
“The reason for that is that there is a great history of the Inverness Highland Games in its Northern Meeting guise taking place down there and it’s a venue we’ve grown to know with the organisation of the Hogmanay event which has got enormous potential.”
It is more than 50 years since the games was staged at the Northern Meeting Park. Figures presented to councillors showed that the event was over-budget to the tune of £11,083 last year and £17,372 overspent the previous year.
Losses since 2007-08 were blamed on less sponsorship, poor weather and, in part, to increasing the size of the event in the hope of attracting additional participants, but not being sufficient to cover costs.
Senior leisure and learning officer Douglas Wilby told the committee that using the council car park next door to the Northern Meeting Park as a hard-standing area would minimise pitch repair costs and provide a less weather dependent events area.