Tom Weir dies
11 Jul 2006
Tom Weir
Broadcaster, climber and author;
Born December 29, 1914;
Died July 6, 2006
TOM Weir was unique. He was the best known outdoor man in Scotland. His small, almost burly figure, his round face and what he once lightheartedly called his aggressive, round nose, all topped by a goblin-style, toorie hat, made him instantly recognisable.
He had a distinctive, couthy style of speech, almost slow, sometimes declamatory, but low pitched, clear as a bell and which endeared him to count¬less lecturing and TV and radio audiences. His name on a poster advertising a slides talk was enough to pack any hall in any part of Scotland.
He was a hill tramper, rock climber, explorer, wildlife expert, writer, historian and outstand¬ing photographer. In popular parlance, he had done it all.
He was product of hard economic times and the will to survive was always accomp¬anied by Glasgow humour. He was born in Springburn, Glasgow, in December 1914. His father had been killed in. the First World War and he and his sister Molly (also to follow a dis¬tinguished career as an actress and writer) were partly brought up by a grandmother as his mother had to work as a wagon painter in the Cowlairs loco¬motive works.
Like others of his generation, he could see hills from high points in Glasgow and set out to find them by bike, hitching, taking buses and trams to the city fringes, sometimes sleeping rough and striving to get back to work by Monday (occasionally Tuesday) morning. It was a scene totally different from today’s expensive gear and easy-access cars.
It bred in him a passionate love for Scotland and it was a matter of deep regret to him that he had reached his senior years without Scotland having her Parliament restored. He explored boyhood canals and rivers, the Campsies and then to the big hills of the north. He first worked in a grocer’s shop, read voraciously, tried freelancing, served as a labourer on a farm in Arran, and was called up in the Ayrshire Yeomanry in the Second World War and spent the years 1940-1946 in the Royal Artillery as a battery surveyor.
He wrote his first book, High¬land Days, during the war, one of the best of outdoor books, a description of climbing and walking in the Highlands in the days before the modem outdoor
boom, before pylons extended their range, dams and reservoirs grew and the landscape was tamed. It was (and is) much loved and was re-issued in recent years.
He became an Ordnance Survey surveyor, but left to go with friends to the Himalayas and this and other expeditions produced other books, The Ultimate Mountains and East of Katmandu. A visit to arctic Norway, the Atlas Mountains, northern Turkey, the Alps and Corsica, were intermingled with exploration and climbs in Scot¬land. All produced books or many articles.
He first wrote for The Scots Magazine in 1949, but his main surge to fame came when the publication asked him to write a monthly column in 1956. It became very popular and later resulted in two books, Weir’s Way and Tom Weir’s Scotland. He started to appear on TV, then got his own TV series and his face became familiar to thousands of people, while he won TV and radio awards. Other books included The West¬ern Highlands, Scottish Islands, and the two-volume The Scot¬tish Lochs (the latter, a remark¬able historical achievement).
Tom was awarded the MBE in 1976. He was a vice-president of the Scottish Rights of Way Society, an executive member of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, president of the Scottish Moun¬taineering Club from 1984 to 1986, and was a campaigner for national parks. He wrote a history of the Kyle rail line to try and save it.
He survived a bad fall on Ben A’n, in the Trossachs, but for most of his life had what one, friend called “chronic health”.
He married Rhona Murray Dickson, of Giffnock, in 1959, a fellow mountaineer, and they lived in Gartocharn, not far from Loch Lomond. Famous names from world moun¬taineering and environmental circles visited them there. It was typical that they spent their honeymoon under canvas on lonely Foula, in Shetland.
In 1994, Tom Weir wrote his long-awaited biography, ‘Weir’s World”, which he called an autobiography of sorts: it is a tapestry of thousands of joyful and perceptive experiences, anecdotes and adventures by a man who was full of zest and was truly one of the most out¬standing outdoor men Scotland has produced.
When will we see his like again?
Rennie McOwan
Former president of Ramblers’ Association Scotland
An appreciation
I REMEMBER it as though it was yesterday. I had been away in the hills for a few days and on my return my wife, with a mischievous look in her eyes, told me that someone had been looking for me. “A wee man,” she said, “with a moustache and a red bobble hat.” I knew instantly who she was talking about and she knew I knew. In a generation when celebrity status has been so cheapened Tom Weir was known, and loved, by the whole of Scotland. Tom and his wife, Rhona, called back later in the evening and we spent the night chatting about mutual friends, climbs, and the wild places of Scotland. It was the beginning of a long friendship and, to a young out¬doors writer (I was in my early thirties), his role as mentor was invaluable.
Tommy is probably best known for his successful out¬door television programmes of the 1970s and 1980s, and many readers will remember his regular monthly column in the Scots magazine, which he wrote for 43 years.
Tom’s original brief, given to him in 1956 by the Scots Mag¬azine’s erstwhile editor, Arthur Daw, was to write a monthly piece containing about half a dozen different topics. Initially, Tom thought he wouldn’t find enough to write about but very soon realised that the big prob¬lem he was going to face was that he had too much to write.
Very quickly he learned to write “on the hoof”, in a bothy or tent, on a train or on a boat, or whenever he had a few min¬utes to spare. He even recalls writing his piece from a hos¬pital bed after he had injured himself in a climbing accident.
His STV series Weir’s Way, which has been showing on various satellite channels in the wee small hours, has latterly attracted something of a cult following among insomniacs, but despite all his success Tom remained modest, untouched by fame. Only last year his wife Rhona wrote to me to say Tom still enjoyed his daily walk and that his passion for Scotland was as strong as ever.
Tommy’s greatest skill was his ability as a natural story¬teller. He could captivate an audience, and loved to tell his stories. Indeed, one of his early television producers, Dermot McQuarrie, once told me that the problem with working with Tom Weir was that he was almost too knowledgeable.
Dermot told me of filming Tom as he interviewed a crofter in the Western Isles when making a film about Bonnie Prince Charles. “And this was the house where Prince Charles
Edward Stuart and Flora Mac¬Donald sheltered before setting sail for Skye when the Prince was on the run from the Duke of Cumberland’s forces after the battle of Culloden,” said Tom to the crofter. The crofter looked at Tom and muttered: “Aye!” There was little more he could add.
When he had completed 40 years of writing for the Scots Magazine I was delighted to take part in a BBC radio discussion with him and the presenter described me as the new Tom Weir. It was a massive compliment but it wasn’t true, far from it. There could only ever be one Tom Weir, he was completely irreplaceable and I wasn’t even fit to tie his boot-laces. There has never been, nor ever will be, another Tom Weir. His contribution to Scotland is unmatched and many people will continue to be inspired by him, as I was.
CAMERON MCNEISH
