Langcraigs Hillwalking Club was set up in 1975 as part of a Labour government initiative called the Quality of Life Experiment aimed at improving the quality of life in six areas in Britain.

Now, four decades on, the club is still on the go and organises two walks a month year-round with weekly evening walks from April to September, and weekends away.

As well as hillwalking, the club also holds regular indoor meetings in the winter months and training for members in skills vital on the hills such as using ice picks and compass navigation.

One of the club’s long-standing members, Harry Bryce, 73, of Dumbarton, credits the club’s longevity to the easy-going nature of the members.

He said: “It’s very pleasant for everybody. There’s no great friction and it’s fairly loose. There are rules there for safety but we have regular meetings and everyone is invited to contribute.” Harry is researching the club’s history and recalled some of the many walks he has taken part on over the years, including one where he had ended up in stand-off with a mountain goat.

He said: “We’d been on a weekend away and were just coming back down the A9 when we stopped off near Dalwhinnie to climb Meall Chuaich. It was a beautiful winter’s day but cold up in the hills and we’d just had our picnic at the top and were coming back down again when someone spotted a herd of wild goats.

“We all started trying to get pictures of them when they started charging towards us. I grabbed a jacket and started a charging towards the billy goat, roaring and flapping this thing.

“The idea was that they don’t really want any problems and they would go away and it did work. The billy goat kept walking away and having a look back at me and I was doing they same to him but he kept walking.” Another outing proved a valuable lesson on keeping tabs on participants as on setting out to climb Am Bodach in Glencoe Harry’s group found they were missing four members.

When they were later reunited they discovered the others had climbed Am Bodach, just not the same one.

Harry said: “Now we always get a map reference. It shows you can get lost before you even start.” And even the club’s training exercises were not without their comic moments, such as when Harry was taking part in a navigation training exercise in Carman Moor in the dark and found Paisley had radically changed position.

He said: “It had just started and I checked my compass and my north was away around toward Paisley. I thought I must have had it next to something magnetic and it had knocked it out 180 degrees. It was fine because we were on the training exercise but if we had been in territory we didn’t know that could have been disastrous.” There are currently around 35 members in the club, from a high of 90 in the past, and Harry said he would love to see new people coming along, especially younger people.

Gordon Mackay, club president, added: “It’s a standard hillwalking club. Everyone gets on with each other and we don’t force people into going on walks. We’re trying to get some new blood into it at the moment.” To mark the anniversary the club will take a cruise on Loch Lomond on July 19, followed by a meal.

The next walk is Beinn Lora on Sunday, March 29.