Year of publication 1990 - Fell and Rock Climbing Club

10 THE GREAT CHASEthe selling agents in Edinburgh who sounded a rather top-drawer set-up.Having interrupted the pause for morning coffee of the partner involved.1 explained to him that members of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club ofthe English Lake District did not roll up to their huts in '"Tranni" vans,fall out of the back door in lumps and vomit into the nearest hedgerow. Iadmit to some fairly outrageous name-dropping and virtually assured thegentleman that it was a prerequisite to membership of the Club that oneowned a Porsche. If there were to be any future visits in connection withthis particular transaction Stephen Porteous was obviously our man.However, my pleading was in vain and the whole holiday complex waslater sold to one purchaser.Back to the Oban Times. During the course of my work, whichseriously impinges upon climbing time, I have to deal with people whoare deeply disappointed because they have not been able to buy whatthey thought was the house of their dreams. So it was with GardenersCottage and 1 had to tell myself to take my own advice, and that is,however disappointed you are. one invariably finds a better propertysome time later.On a visit, I looked at a small house on the way to Appin fromBallachulish. The asking price was £45,000 and that seemed, at thattime, far in excess of what the Committee considered to be a reasonableprice to pay. There was a very suitable property for sale at the back ofGlencoe Village. We had very little time to make up our minds and, intact, could hardly do so within the time available before "the closingdate".The closing date is a feature of property transactions in Scotland.When a property is offered for sale, prospective purchasers have toarrange their surveys, ensure that they have finance available, and whenthey have gone to the trouble and expense of making thesearrangements, they then make a written offer to the seller or hisSolicitors or Agents, and these offers have to be in the hands of theseller or his Solicitor or Agents by the closing date. On that date theyare opened and the seller then has the choice of considering the variousoffers and selling to the highest bidder or alternatively the person hethinks most suitable. So far as a buyer is concerned, this system is farworse than buying a property at auction, as one does not know theamount of the opposition's bid.As I mentioned before, in these circumstances we had to arrangesurveys and discuss whether the property met the criteria which theCommittee finally set down. These criteria were:-The Official Opening of Waters Cottage. President David Miller presents theGolden Key to Warden Alan Rowland and Assistant Warden Cynthia Grindley.Photograph by Ron Townsend.