WATCH: Stoltman brothers and MacGregor's hope to put Highlands on the map as countdown starts for Inverness Highland Games
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WITH just over a fortnight of wait ahead, the countdown has started for one of Inverness' most anticipated events.
The Inverness Highland Games are returning to Bught Park this year on Saturday, July 15, promising once again to be a day to remember.
Among the novelties to look out for this year are a colour fun run on the day and a ceilidh taking place at Bught Park on the games day's evening with an all star ceilidh band including Bruce MacGregor from Blazin Fiddles, Brian MacAlpine (Session A9) at the piano, fiddler Jonny Hardie (Old Blind Dogs) and Gregor Lowrey (Ceilidh Minogue) at the accordion.
Kim Raite, event manager, said: "This will be a brilliant day out for all the family, and this year we will be introducing our evening event. So along with all the traditional aspects of the games such as the track and field events, the heavy weights – we'll have the Stoltman brothers joining us again for their demonstration, we'll have a clans tent with over 16 clans in attendance and the heritage centre
"We are introducing our colour fun run of about 3.5km where you can run and get splashed with colour powder.
"We are working with MacGregor's bar this year which is great. There will be live music all day throughout the event and in the evening the ceilidh with the all star band playing . It really will be a fantastic day and evening for everybody!!
Inverness musician and bar owner Bruce MacGregor said it will a great event.
He said: "It will be a great opportunity to get locals and visitors together and learn some ceilidh dancing. We've got three hours worth of ceilidh dancing as well as music all day through with some of the country's best folk artists.
"Having a Highland Games - this could become one of the biggest attractions for tourists to the area. You go to America and some of the Highland games there are mammoth! The biggest on ein the world is in Grandfather Mountain and attracts like 75,000 people, it's absolutely crazy.
"It's something we should embrace it and build upon and pull people from around the world in Inverness for it."
The world's strongest brothers, Luke and Tom Stoltman, will attend the Inverness gamesday for the second year running and said they hope to inspire the next generation of young athletes.
Last year they attended with a stall as well as doing talks with the public and lifting the Inverness stone.
"This year we will d very much the same but hopefully on a bigger scale," said Luke Stoltman.
"We really want to promote the Highland Games in the capital of the Highlands, and Tom and I really want to see the next batch of youngsters coming through and we hope to inspire them and hopefully.
"We are very passionate about being from the Highlands, we owe a lot of our success to the community up here so we hope we can help putting Inverness and Invergordon on the map in a big way."
For tickets and to learn more about the event visit: invernesshighlandgames.com
