Another warm sunny day in Hinton.
We met up with at the Town Hall where Ed was ready to start out days tour. We met Deputy Mayor Ian Duncan who welcomed us to the Town and recounted on his roots in Aberdeen and his recent visit to Scotland. Martin explained the Group Friendship Exchange and Jim presented a Highland Council plaque.
Bernie then gave us a guided tour round the new building which serves the local community. The building is designed to minimise the impact on the environment using river water to provide cooling in the summer, local timber in the structure and a drainage system which keeps all the surface drainage within the plot.
Next we went over to the fire department and met Fire Chief Roger and his deputy Mike who showed us round the building and the equipment, including rapid response units and tracked recovery vehicles. Roger told us about a Rotary sponsored fire training initiative for grade 9 school pupils which gives them fire and emergency awareness training and also a practical exercise of cutting open a crashed car. Roger said that following the course several young people have volunteered for the Fire Service. What a splendid initiative.
We next went to the Hinton training centre where we experienced the interactive training that is given to fire fighters dealing with forest fires. This is very intense training but extremely effective in a simulated environment before the students have to experience the real fires.
Lunch was at Queens where Peter made us most welcome and we all enjoyed the freshly prepared fayre.
Keith had been admitted to hospital this morning just for tests so we went over and Martin and Janet went in to see how he was feeling which was ok but probably in for a day or two.
After lunch we went over to Cadomen where a huge open cast coal mine was being landscaped after it had closed down due to economics. There were long horn sheep, deer and black bears to be seen and we then went off towards the Cardinal Divide traveling parallel to the new mine road with huge Euclid trucks running alongside us. We were a little late when we got to the old cemetery which overlooked the location of the old town - which was flattened many years ago- it was quite spookey to look over the old photos of a town which no longer exists. So we didn't quite get up to the Divide.
The evening was spent with our hosts and a good time was had by all.
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