Temperatures in Scotland on Sunday reached a UK record of 19.6 degrees at Kinlochewe in Torridon. There is an excellent short blog and photos showing the impact on the Scottish Avalanche Information Service website (see here). While the temperature spike is explained by the foehn effect (see here), it still beats previous heat records in…
Month: January 2024
On 25th January, Network Rail announced it was extending the platforms on eight stations along the West Highland Line by 15m at a cost of £1.7m to allow trains to run with an extra carriage (see here). The purpose of this investment is to help meet increasing passenger demand and enable the trains to carry…
Following my post on deer fencing and capercaillie on Speyside (see here), a friend and sometime contributor to Parkswatch, Nick Halls, brought to my attention to the latest issue of the Geographer, the magazine of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. It is all about trees. In it there is an interview with Thomas MacDonell who…
On 20th October Highland Council validated a planning application (see here or ref 23/04700/FUL) to erect a 25m high telecommunications mast high on Creag Dubh between Newtonmore and Laggan. Since Creag Dubh is protected as a Site of Scientific Interest the mast requires full planning permission and Highland Council has the power to reject it….
Gaming the holes in Scotland’s planning system Yesterday I was notified by Highland Council that the planning application (Ref 23/04957/FUL) for a telecommunications mast and 2.4km of track in the Wild Land Area at the eastern end of Loch Mullardoch had been withdrawn. A small bit of good news. Highland Council has already withdrawn all…
It is just over a year since I explained how the Cairngorms National Park Authority has ignored the role of deer fencing in the decline of capercaillie (see here). While the causes of capercaillie and black grouse decline are complex – they include loss of habitat and climate change – the one thing that has…
The weather was extraordinary on Ben Lomond on 7th January- blue sky and sunshine, with dry, crisp snow on the ground and fog in the valleys. As a result it was very busy, I have never seen so many people enjoying the hill at the same time – I guess that I saw / passed…
Parkswatch has already featured the Shared Rural Networks (SRN) scheme, and some instances of its potential impact (see here), (here) and (here). Some digging (mostly by others) reveals that the potential impact of the SRN scheme is much bigger and much worse that many people previously thought. To recap, the Shared Rural Networks (SRN) scheme is…
The Cairn Gorm funicular railway first went into service on 24 December 2001. The significant cost overruns have been well documented but it should be made clear that the construction costs were met from the public purse and that there was no requirement on the operating company to repay any of that grant funding. The…
Soon after suggesting that sporting estates managed for grouse pose the greater threat to access rights because of their concerted attempts to make people “keep to the path” (see here), I came across this salutary reminder that some deer stalking estates are still ignoring the Scottish Outdoor Access Code (SOAC). One of the primary meanings…
On Friday the following comment was submitted to my post on Access Rights and Grouse Moors (see here) “Without mammalian (mustelid and rodent) control there would be no ground nesting birds of any kind, grouse or otherwise.” Comment: This is plainly wrong. Ground nesting birds evolved along with mustelids and rodents long before any predator…
On 18th December two pairs of beavers were released on Speyside, one on the Rothiemurchus Estate and one on land belonging to Wildland Ltd (see here). This followed NatureScot’s identification of Speyside as one of the priority areas for translocation of beavers from the Tay and the decision of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA)…
Wildlife, however much depleted, is present everywhere. Consequently if wildlife was a reason to keep to tracks there would be no right to roam anywhere. And in my case I could not have attained my objective on Hogmanay, the trackless summit of Carn nan Tri-Tighearnan a few miles north of the Cairngorms National Park. The…