Following my post questioning what the Cairngorms National Park Authority was doing about the unlawful hill track leading onto Carn Leth Choin in upper Glen Banchor, west of Newtonmore (see here), I wrote to the Cairngorms National Park Authority. On 8th March (I have been in Norway in-between) I received this response from Murray Ferguson:…
Following the announcement by Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority staff of their decision to close the slipway and ranger base at Milarrochy (see here), Peter Jack, Chair of the Loch Lomond Association wrote to James Stuart, new convener of the LLNPA, asking the Board to review the decision at their meeting last Monday. …
The LLTNPA is discouraging camping at designated sites. Following the implementation of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Management Zones on 1st March and the requirement to purchase a permit for the use of designated sites or risk a criminal conviction I revisited two sites to refresh my recollection of the environmental condition…
The camping byelaws dominate the lengthy agenda of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs Board meeting on Monday. There is information or decisions about the byelaws and camping plans under almost every agenda item (see here for papers) as well as a specific paper on Your Park. The most important thing that should have been…
Three years ago I knew nothing about boating on Loch Lomond and, if you had asked me about the Loch Lomond byelaws, – the ones that control boat users on the Loch – my response would have probably been along the lines of “anything which controls speedboats must be a good thing”. That way…
. If you want to understand what is going wrong at Cairngorm (or indeed in National Parks or the wider economy), I believe you need some understanding of what is going on financially. If there is going to be any recovery of democratic control in Scotland, whether in our National Parks or outside, we…
The east Loch Lomond camping byelaws 2011 should have been repealed before the new camping byelaws came into effect on 1st March. (In fact they should have been repealed completely, not replaced, as they had only ever been agreed as a temporary measure (see here)). However, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority hit…
In what I believe is a very positive development Onekind has launched a campaign to protect mountain hares in the Cairngorms National Park (see here). I think they are right to focus on the National Park – if we cannot protect wildlife in our National Parks then we are unlikely to protect wildlife anywhere except for…
On Thursday, I went climbing near Glen Coe and on the way up and back down the A82 checked out a few things about the west Loch Lomond camping management zone. I almost missed the sign announcing the start of the zone, just before Luss, despite looking out for it. A large proportion of drivers…
On Friday 19th August 2016, after a site visit, Cairngorms National Park Authority Planning Committee passed the latest, and certainly not the last, of a series of highly controversial planning applications by the Speyside Trust, which manages a large site at Badaguish, in the heart of Glenmore Forest. The applications are controversial because the Speyside…
Today probably marks the most retrograde in the history of access to land in Scotland since the Trespass Scotland Act of 1865 as the camping byelaws come into force. When even Radio 3, not renowned for covering the great outdoors, announces on its 7.30 news headlines that campers in one of Britain’s prime beauty spots…
In a post last week (see here) I explained how the LLTNPA had landscaped the area its owns by Loch Venachar House to block off access and how it is no longer possible to walk round the shore of Loch Venachar from the car park to Loch Venachar dam. In this post I will look…
Ten days ago I received a response to another Freedom of Information request, EIR 2016-068 Appendix A list meetings of the secret Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board business sessions that took place in 2016. There were six of them, a slight reduction from the ten held in 2015 (at the height…
Following my posts (see here) and (here) on the rights of and need for National Park Board Members to speak out, this excellent letter appeared in the Strathie this week. (I know Peter very slightly, he preceded me on the Board of SNH, but I have not had contact with him for c 10 years)….
Alteration of the camping byelaws The camping byelaws that now appear on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park website (see here) differ signficantly from those approved by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board and then sent to the Minister (see here). This came as a surprise to me because the then Minister,…
The stretch of land between Dalwhinnie and Feagour, on the A96 west of Laggan, taken by the Beauly Denny powerline is fairly unfrequented. Following my posts on the Beauly Denny at Drumochter (see here) and (here), my thanks to Jonathan Binny for sending these photos of the section between Feagour and the col east of…
On Sunday, I was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s story of the selfish giant. The story is about a giant who returns to his castle, finds children playing in his garden and infuriated, builds a wall to keep them out but then the hard way learns the error of his ways. Its a parable about many…
Following my post about the failure to restore the destruction caused by the Beauly Denny by the developer, Scottish and Southern Electric, I went last Monday to have a look at the section of the “temporary” construction track on the Drumochter Estate. Under the Beauly Denny planning application determined by the Scottish Government, all…
Back in 2011 the justification for the camping byelaws on east Loch Lomond was all about anti-social behaviour. Here is what then Chief Executive Fiona Logan said on BBC News 10 March 2011: “National park chief executive Fiona Logan said she did not believe there were any other areas of the park where similar…
On 8th February, a few days after my post on freedom-speech-democracy-national-parks Peter Argyle, Convener of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, posted a Statement on Cairngorms News about his dispute with Board Member Councillor Bill Lobban titled “Convener Clear on Code of Conduct”. Its positive that Peter Argyle has been open about this because what…
I have now had responses to two of the issues I took up with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park after the appearance of Gordon Watson, their Chief Executive, on the Out of Doors programme on National Parks early in the New Year and which I covered in a post at the time (see…
The Cairngorms National Park Planning Committee on 8th July 2016 were informed under Any Other Business of the unlawful creation of yet another hill track in the National Park – at the head of Glen Banchor on the Cluny Estate. This was reported in the Strathy and the minute records that “The Committee…
The above extract speaks for itself and confirms what most people already knew, the LLTNPA deliberately omitted the Loch Lomond Islands from the camping byelaw consultation because they thought if they did so, this might stop their attempt to undermine access rights because of the opposition it would create. This extract and the minute of…
A few weeks ago Jane Meek sent me photos of the Ardchullarie hydro scheme. The Ardchullarie Burn runs parallel to the path popular with hillwalkers that leads into Glen Ample and Ben Vorlich from Loch Lubnaig. I checked the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority planning portal to find out more about this…
I have been puzzling about the development of the camping byelaws by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park now for some time. Back in 2011 when the east Loch Lomond camping byelaws were put into place, the then LLTNPA Chief Executive Fiona Logan made a number of statements (these are taken from BBC News…