In August, after the landslides at the Rest and Be Thankful, I visited Glen Falloch to look at what damage had been done to the run of river hydro schemes there by the heavy rainfall. It is three weeks since I blogged about the damage that I had missed seeing in 2019 (see here). That…
Author: Nick Kempe
School Wood, Nethy Bridge On Friday (see here), after a long campaign by local conservationists, the Cairngorms National Park Authority Board decided by a vote of 14-2 to reject the recommendations of their planning staff and refuse the application for housing at School Wood. They are to be congratulated. This was a major test for…
Highland and Island Enterprise’s Cairngorm Mountain business is not on the public water supply. Water comes either from the Marquis Well or the Fiacaill Pump House intake and, while weather on Speyside has been better than much of the rest of Scotland recently, there has not been a drought. In the past there was quite…
Last Sunday I went for a walk around Ceann na Baintighearna from Glen Buckie which runs south from Loch Voil. We took a slanting track up from north of Ballimore, past this neat farm dump. It had been preceded by piles of equally neatly stacked logs which were slowly rotting. A wasted resource. I don’t…
Yesterday Save Loch Lomond sent parkswatch a number of photos of rubbish from the layby off the A82 on the West side of Loch Lomond opposite the Carrick. They also posted a video (see here) on their Facebook page. The comments on that page were right, this is disgusting. But this provides more evidence that…
Having announced a new masterplan, that wasn’t, in April 2017 (see here) and, eighteen months later, a new £27 million vision that went nowhere (see here), Highlands and Islands Enterprise, without reference to those failures or what could be learned from them, launched at the end of July a consultation called “towards a new vision…
Following my posts on how litter (see here) and traffic management issues (see here) are being used to attack access rights, Perth and Kinross Council has now gone further than even the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority has dared to do. The move could undermine access rights across Scotland. The comments on thei…
Earlier in the week, a few people copied me into a twitter exchange about Scottish Natural Heritage’s delayed name change. If I was capable of doing anything on twitter, except using it as a means of enabling people to follow parkwatch’s posts, I might have shared this: Says it all really! If you don’t…
A few weeks ago some friends went in their campervan to Glen Muick, on Deeside, and stopped off overnight in the lower part of the glen. They were woken in the early hours by the sound of passing traffic. They were stunned by the number of visitors, remarking that it was just like the Lake…
Since lockdown was relaxed, it seems hardly a day has gone past when there has not been some national media coverage claiming that visitors have been responsible for a wave of litter that is said to engulfing the countryside. In the vast majority of cases visitors have been condemned, abused even, sometimes by people purporting…
Little did I know when blogging about the Cairngorms National Park wildlife sinkhole (see here) that the League of Cruel Sports was going to publish their report, Calculating Cruelty (see here), on 14th August. The Report, if you have not seen it, is a based on a comprehensive field survey of seven estates. From this…
On Friday the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park issued a Stop Notice to prevent further work taking place on the creation of this new entrance onto the A811 on the south side of Loch Lomond (see here). Kilmaronock Community Council, which covers the area, had alerted them to the work a few days…
Last Tuesday, almost exactly a year after the large floods that caused so much destruction in Glen Falloch (see here), torrential rain triggered another massive landslip on the slopes of Beinn Luibhean closing the A83 and the old Military Road below the Rest and Be Thankful. This post argues that the Scottish Government’s tinkering option…
Yesterday, I was due to meet a few folk from Aberdeen and go for a walk around the eastern fringes of the Cairngorms National Park. With the outbreak of Covid-19 in the Granite City, that was clearly not sensible and we have re-arranged for a later date. The aborted trip, however, prompted me to take…
The Cairngorms National Park Authority may have acted promptly against its vice-convener, Gena Blackett, last week for something she said (see here), but when it comes to meaningful actions on conservation, it is not fit for purpose. This post takes a look at the CNPA’s multiple failures when it comes to protecting wildlife as revealed…
The Cairngorm National Park Authority Board investigation was completed very quickly. The same day this article appeared the CNPA convener, Xander McDade, announced (see here) that the Board’s Risk and Audit Committee had decided that “the potential of a breach of the Code of Conduct should be referred to the Standards Commission”, the body responsible…
No sooner had I complimented Forest and Land Scotland on how they had opened up their car parks in Glen More to campervans (see here) than they did an about turn as a result of events on the weekend that followed (see above). FLS is now trying to close car parks in Glen More to…
In the last ten days I have travelled up and back down the A82 and, as usual, stopped off in a few popular visitor destinations to see how they are being managed. Toilet provision At Tarbet it was good to see that mobile toilets had been provided by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park…
[Update: I had a phone call from Jahama Estates on 5th August to say all three signs referred to in this post and subsequent update have now been removed. I thanked them for this though my view remains the signs should never have been erected] I have just come back from a week in Lochaber,…
A number of developments have taken place since I covered the unlawful felling of trees and the creation of a new entrance to Ben Cruach Lodge at Tarbet, on the western shore of Loch Lomond, in May (see here). Coverage in the Helensburgh Advertiser (see here) appears to confirm that Ben Cruach Lodge is owned…
On 13th July Highlands and Islands Enterprise announced that Cairngorm Mountain was re-opening today (see here). While the Scottish Government had been advising people they could travel unlimited distances by car since the weekend of 4th July, HIE decided to keep the Coire Cas car park, the most popular access point to the northern side…
“It is always a great crime to deprive a people of its liberty on the pretext that it is using it wrongly” (Alexis de Tocqueville) The latest government guidance on release of the lockdown treated informal camping in exactly the same way as formal campsites (see here): “Those who want to camp in tents in…
Audit Scotland’s report into HIE’s management of Cairn Gorm since 2008 was published two weeks ago (see here). The first two parts, on the outsourcing of Cairngorm Mountain Ltd to Natural Retreats and subsequent management of the contract, are a disappointment but not a surprise They completely exonerate HIE. Effectively Audit Scotland’s message is that…
Having argued last week (see here) that the Scottish Government could lift the shutdown of self-catering accommodation and its advice not to travel further than 5 miles, its announcement on Wednesday (see here) that this would now happen on 3rd July was a step in the right direction. Neither restriction has been necessary for weeks…
Two weekends ago Police Scotland charged the same number of people for breaching the camping byelaws in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park than had been charged over the whole of the previous three years. Stirling Council’s response to people traveling into the National Park after the first phase of lifting of lockdown was…