The Robert Wiseman Dairies Vale of Atholl Pipe Band is a competitive grade one pipe band. The band has placed highly in the Major Scottish competitions and the World Pipe Band Championships since at least the late 1980s. Sponsorship is currently by Robert Wiseman Dairies, though in the past it has been by Macnaughtons and ScotRail. "The Vale" has continued to be consistent in high level competition, placing 7th at the 2007 World Championships.
Every Monday during the summer the junior band hosts a traditional evening of music, dancing and song in Pitlochry, beginning and ending with a short parade along the high street
Famous quotes containing the words vale of, vale, pipe and/or band:
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers
And never a ploughman under the Sun.
Never a ploughman. Never a one.”
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953)
“What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors. It’s astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn’t stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)