b'Fylde Guitars and the Ullapool Guitar FestivalThe north and north west of Scotlandwhisky and showed me how to playwere booked to play, and instantly are some of my favourite parts of thebagpipes. made huge numbers of new friends, world. I love the scenery, the trees,I have more, similar stories. I feelmet old friends, and players from beaches, mountains, rivers, fishingpartly Scottish as a result, and itsall over the world who I have sold ports, the people, and the smell ofnothing to do with the Whisky. guitars to, but never actually met pine, smoke and ozone.As a youth,So - to have a guitar festival basedbefore. I was shown the most astonishingin Ullapool was rather more than I sit at the stand all weekend, and friendship and hospitality there. tempting. Im rarely by myself - somebody On one occasion when I was aboutWe started to go to the festival whenalways wants to play and chat, seventeen, I went with a groupJohn Smith and Gareth Pearsonand as long as the hangover isnt of six friends from Birmingham to drive around Scotland, including the Hebrides. We went to visit a family who were cutting peat, living in a tin shack for the whole of the summer, and arrived while they were eating their supper. Two adults and two young boys, without hesitation or comment, scraped food off their own plates to feed six hungry young men. On that same trip, one of our party became ill, and was taken in by two lady pensioners who looked after him for several days while we camped in their garden. I have even been shipwrecked in a force seven gale on Loch Ness, the local police commandeered a launch in response to our distress flare. The policeman came back to our boat later that night with a bottle of 390'