PORTKNOCKIE CBS
IN 1983 Portknockie CBS arose from the ashes of the now defunct Banff & MacDuff CBS, the first show being held in the Cullen Bay Hotel in 1983. Since then the society has only changed venue twice. (Three if you count another one in the Cullen Bay Hotel due to a double booking by Moray Council in the Cullen Town Hall. If the show was still held in the Cullen Town Hall, I think the stairs would have killed off most of today's fanciers, writes Sandy Hay).
Preparations for the 2023 show started a day earlier on the Thursday, as our transport manager George Dawson was involved with setting up the Christmas Kracker in Buckie town centre. This is an annual event for the festive season in Buckie. With George and Brian Shepherd transporting the staging to the Bowling & Tennis Club in Cullen on Thursday, we all got the night off on Friday.
Setting up
At 8am on Saturday morning we met at the hall to get the staging up. We had a couple pairs of extra hands this year with Brian's son Kevin home on leave from working offshore andnie Balliey from King Edward near Banff getting stuck in. The extra hands made light work of the staging. With that done we got the doors locked and headed home to get our birds caged up and be back at the hall for 6pm. As we arrived back at the show hall it was no surprise to see a campervan in pole position in the car park. Donnie Bain, his wife Sandra and Jack Russell Gem were settling in nicely having arrived from Wick some 160 miles to the North.
