At a traditional Scottish Highland Games, fit athletes engage in rigorous pursuits like caber-tossing, hammer-throwing and stone-carrying.
For decades, the best athletes in northern Scotland would compete in the Cabrach Games. And one of the legends of those games was Charles Taylor. He was judged the best-performing athlete of the Games in 1926, 1928 and 1929; the third victory meant he got to keep the event’s trophy, known as the Rose Bowl.
The Games folded in 1935. No longer would cabers be tossed (a caber is a 20-foot long wooden pole). No longer would hammers be thrown (a hammer is a metal ball attached to a pole). And, perhaps saddest of all, no longer would stones be carried (in that event, competitors carry heavy stones across a field. If they make it to the end of the field, they are given even heavier stones. Perhaps a bleak metaphor for life).
But the Cabrach Games were revived in 2022, and it seemed natural to hunt down the Rose Bowl to present it to the best of a new generation of athletes.
In the 1980s, there had been a three-year search for the trophy, with the cup eventually found in the possession of Ron Taylor, Charles’s son.
But as time passed organizers lost track of the trophy again.
Good news: After an appeal to the public — “If you have an inkling of the whereabouts of the Rose Bowl, please get in touch” — the Rose Bowl was found again … in the possession of Adrian Taylor, Charles’s grandson.
