Following my post on the replacement bridges at Bracklinn Falls and the West Highland Way (see here) Alannah Maurer sent me some photos of a path and bridge over the Croe Water at Ardgartan which has been blocked off since 2019 and possibly earlier.

I can’t tell from either the Registers of Scotland or Andy Wightman’s website Who Owns Scotland who owns or is responsible for the bridge.  While Forest and Land Scotland (FLS) own the land on the north side of the Croe Water, it is less clear whether the land by the south side of the bridge is owned by the Ardgartan Hotel or FLS.  While neither has a legal obligation to maintain pedestrian bridges, part of the function of FLS is to facilitate outdoor recreation, while the walk is still being promoted on the Ardgarten Hotel website (see here):

The bridge is also in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, one of whose statutory purposes is to promote outdoor recreation and which was supposed, through the National Park Partnership Plan, to get other public authorities working alongside it to achieve its objectives.  Had the LLTNPA been doing the job it was set up to do,  it would have been taking action to ensure recreational infrastructure such as this was maintained:

Instead, any recreational infrastructure regarded as “non-essential” is just being allowed to crumble – like the pink cottage behind – and the LLTNPA has been allowing FLS, by far the largest single landowners in the National Park,  to get away with reducing the number of paths and bridges it maintains (see here).  

Its all about money of course.  But despite the voluminous research showing that outdoor recreation and exercise is good for people’s physical and means health and reduces demands on the NHS, the LLTNPA has proved itself incapable of making the case to the Scottish Government for investing in recreational infrastructure.

Instead, the LLTNPA has done the opposite, abandoning its outdoor recreation plan (see here), doing the minimum possible to extend its core paths network (see here), frittering away the legacy from the Mountains for People footpath project and asking the Scottish Government to approve byelaws making it far more difficult for people to go camping or boating.

All the LLTNPA does for recreational infrastructure is beg for money for what is most pressing, like the West Highland Way.  Crumbling bridges like that at Ardgartan, which might once have been maintained, have no chance. The LLTNPA has no strategy or plan to deal with the disappearing infrastructure apart from the unstated one of hoping no-one notices.

The LLTNPA has committed to reporting on the state of nature in the National Park every five years (see here). It is telling that they have not committed to do the same for outdoor recreation and produce a state of access infrastructure report in the National Park every five years. The two should be connected because the vast majority of people use outdoor recreational infrastructure to enjoy nature.

Meantime, I would welcome other photos or examples of crumbling recreational infrastructure in either of our National Parks – a public inventory is needed to show what is going on.