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 at least 200 people in 4 hours of walking.
So, at the so-called welcome / visitor centre, I find the loos [owned by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) – ed] closed for the season. The whole building was locked like Fort Knox and the first thing I met on the way round to the footpath was someone having a pee up against the wall of the building.
It was kind of someone to welcome us back but really they are trying to tell us that they no long have rubbish bins on site:
According to another sign it is supposedly good for nature and wildlife not to collect rubbish:
But the consequence is abandoned Costa coffee cups…
Macdonalds bags, food packaging and the rest….
So, on the busiest day I have seen at Ben Lomond, the loos and the rubbish collection are not available, presumably due to financial constraints. However, the public sector partners, the LLTNPA and Forest and Land Scotland, seem incapable of collecting the money that their budget planned for:
At least £500 foregone on one day based on the 100+ cars in the car park…and the non-functioning of the meter is clearly not a temporary blip….
If the reason for the bad visitor experience is financial, then why were there 33, thirty three, LLTNPA branded vehicles parked, unused, in the Carrochan House and Duncan Mills slipway car parks on the Saturday afternoon?
Part of this is mismanagement by Forest and Land Scotland and part by the LLTNPA but it is all about a failure to make best use of public money.
[Note from Ed. Peter Page, a resident in the National Park, sent this to parkswatch last week while I was away. It shows that nothing has improved at Ben Lomond, one of Scotland’s most iconic mountains, or the road end at Rowardennan since I wrote about it two years ago (see here). While the failure to provide bins presumably helps ensure the small team the LLTNPA now employ to pick up litter are kept busy, the closed toilets and a major public health and equalities issue, as explained in the Guardian this week (see here).]
Curious to know where the nearest Costa or Maccy Ds is to this Place?
Just gotta love the ubiquitous dog shit bag aswell.
Balloch is the nearest Mackies
Yes, a doggy bag bin would not go amiss too. Our public authorities need to recognise the fact that most people are not going to put those bags of doggy poo into the backs of their cars (or take them on the bus if there was one here)
LLNP do not do sensible
Why could those who made the effort to bring all these cups, containers etc to Rowardennan not make a similar effort to take them back home – empty? Would also save LLNP, Nat Trust or Local Authotity staff the task of tidying up after them? Seems simple and a much more efficient solution to me. Or am I missing something?
The issues is that for whatever reasons – researching these reasons in more detail would be very helpful – the facts are that a large proportion of people don’t take their litter home and that appears even less likely when that litter consists of dog poo in plastic bags. So, no bins, places end up looking terrible and that appears to encourage even more people to leave their litter. Council bin lorries already travel along almost every road in the park and the cost of them stopping off to empty a litter bin is very small, far less than the cost of sending someone else out to clear a place up. Cutting bins is therefore in my view the opposite of efficient and that was partially demonstrated by the Friends of Loch Lomond and Trossachs provision of bins to the laybys on West Loch Lomond. That is now under threat with our public authorities passing the buck rather than cooperating to ensure bins on the A82 were emptied (as Highland Council does all along the A9).
Sadly there is always percentage of the population who are simply antisocial but this truism has to be planned for not necessarily by bins left everywhere but people paid to litter-pick. Also not for this small minority to be used as an excuse for while the rest of us should be restricted access to our own land.
What are the 33 LLNP vehicles actually for, the LLNP only owns a campsite and a few car parks. I wonder where they go!