The Spirit of St Olaf
The Spirit of St. Olaf raft marked the final outing of the lodge in the Ythan Raft Race. It was the summer of 1995 and the Lodge entries had won top prizes in each of the 9 previous years.
This year however was to prove to be something quite different from anything we had experienced before! Scottish Television approached the Raft Race organisers asking if they could take part in the filming of the race from a participant’s point of view. Their Scottish activities programme co-hosted by Dougie Vipond and Jenny Faulkner was looking for a suitable raft to hitch a lift on and the organisers immediately suggested the St. Olaf entry!
Although the St. Olaf entries always attracted a lot of pre-race press interest, this development moved us into a different league altogether. The links below will take you to a selection of the articles covered by the local press over this year’s entry which I’m sure you’ll find humorous and interesting.
The race was given superb coverage during the final programme which turned out to be the swan song of the lodge in this particular event.
The raft race only continued for two further years before finishing its long and impressive run of 25 years as the largest raft race in Europe and a massive attraction in the North East of Scotland.
Result: The Winner of the Most Creative Raft
Crew
Gordon Mackay
Ewan Robertson
Mark Dunn
Mark Templeman
Derek Clark
Ed Walford
Kevin Moorhouse
Jeff Preston
Greig Mackay
Adam Moorhouse
Doogie Vipond
s1
s3
s4
s5
s7
Spirit-1
Short Clip featuring Mucker and Dougie Vipond
Extended video from the 1995 Ythan Raft race
Extract from The Big Country TV programme featuring the 1995 Ythan Raft Race