Following last week’s post on the undergrounding of powerlines in Glen Tromie (see here), in which there was a photo showing how they had blighted the Speyside Way extension, Peter Crane from the Cairngorms National Park Authority sent me a photo of how it looks now, after the powerlines have been removed.   Thank you Peter.

You can judge for yourself the difference by comparing to a couple of my photos below from December 2015 but in my view, with the removal of the powerlines, the Speyside Way is far more worthy of a planning award than it was in 2016 (see here).

Following this improvement I would, though, still like to see the CNPA promoting a variant to this section of the Speyside Way along the fine section of river at Kinrara which has been avoided by the extension.  This would also make it far more obvious to people that they could do circular walks using this section of the Way.   The challenge is getting landowners to agree to this – time, as Dave Morris proposed in his interview with Scotland Out of Doors at the weekend, for Public Authorities to be given Compulsory Purchase Powers to put paths in place.