Last week Severin Carrell in the Guardian revealed that BrewDog had sold their “Lost Forest”, the Kinrara Estate, to Oxygen Conservation for £8.85m, £350k much more than the £8.5m they had paid for it five years previously (see here). This post considers some of the issues this raises including: why BrewDog sold the land for…
Category: Cairngorms
Earlier this week in my post on how the National Lottery now appears to be picking up a significant proportion of funding for Scotland’s National Parks (see here), I stated that Sandy Bremner, Convener of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) had recently been appointed to the Scottish Committee of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. That…
On 1st April 2022 a new Land Register, the Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land (RCI), was created under The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016. Its intention was to cut through all the off-shore companies, trusts etc, which are often used to own and manage land, and enable the “real” owners and…
[This post was updated and corrected 6th March – see post on apologies to Sandy Bremner 6th March] The Scottish Government’s budget for 2026/27 included significant cuts for both the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) (see here for budget documents). Over the course of two…
[This post was updated and corrected 12/2/26 to reflect the fact that the costs of creating new plantations are not fully met by Scottish Forestry grants] On Thursday Oxygen Conservation announced (see here) that they have been awarded £3.3m in forestry grants to plant a large chunk of the Invergeldie Estate north of Comrie. …
There can be few among us, who, when they hear the name ‘Galapagos’ do not have mental images conjured up, of all the wonderful TV documentaries over several decades, perhaps even going right back, as in my own case, to the black and white transmissions of ‘Baby-Boomer’ childhood. The Galapagos are imprinted on our collective…
The CairnGorm Mountain [Scotland] Ltd [CMSL] accounts for the year ending 31 March 2025 were published in November 2025 (see here). They showed that the business recorded an operating loss of £2,833,280 for that financial year. That’s the day-to-day operating loss and nothing to do with the Capital Expenditures associated with the Funicular Repairs or…
The BBC Scotland Outdoors radio programme broadcast from Cairn Gorm on 17th January (see here) included a piece on the montane planting project in Coire na Ciste. You would not know from listening to it on BBC sounds (here between 48-54 minutes) that there had been any controversy about the project, both because the Caledonian…
The predictable happened yesterday, the strong south east winds blowing across Cairn Gorm deposited large quantities of snow in the lee of the entrance to the tunnel at the top of the funicular blocking it. It took considerable efforts on the part of at least four CairnGorm Mountain staff working with shovels (see here) to…
Following “Parkswatch’s” submission to the Public Audit Committee (see here), the authors were delighted to be asked to attend the Committee to give further evidence. Three of us are doing so today (Wednesday 14th January) (see here). You can watch the session, which is due to start around 11am, live or afterwards on the Scottish…
The legacy of BrewDog and Scottish Woodlands at Kinrara (2) – the Caledonian Pinewood on the Dulnain
I have delayed this second post on the Lost Forest because I wanted to use what has happened at Kinrara to illustrate the arguments I and a number of others made in a paper published in the latest edition of Scottish Forestry: “Caledonian Pinewoods. A Conservation Framework” (Volume 79 No 3 Autumn/Winter 2025). Vicky Allan has…
The Public Audit Committee inquiry into the funicular and the latest accounts for Cairngorm Mountain
Last Monday, 17th November, the accounts for Highland and Island Enterprise (HIE)’s subsidiary which operates Cairngorm Mountain were published on Companies House (see here). The next day the Scottish Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is currently investigating the funicular railway, met local stakeholders at a round table session in Aviemore. Parkswatch campaigners have checked…
One wonders how much further the price of the Abrdn Property Income Trust (APIT) will drop from the current asking price of offers over £6.9m once prospective buyers become aware sheep are grazing among the newly created native woodland plantation at Far Ralia (see here)? As Drennan Watson has observed, once planted trees start to…
In response to my blog post of 10th October (see here) on ‘The near total destruction of a Twinflower population at Creag Bheithe Bheag in the Cairngorms National Park. What went wrong, and what lessons might be learnt for the future?’ I received replies from the CEO of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA), Scottish Forestry (SF)…
Today the Public Audit Committee (PAC) of the Scottish Parliament, which is investigating the funicular railway (see here), is holding a round table discussion in Aviemore and is due to visit Cairn Gorm. Yesterday, the funicular was out of action yet again. The reference to “a remote technical team” is significant. It suggests that these…
This picture of two piers below the passing loop show just how bad things are. There are 47 brackets on the two “I” beams between those piers and the two insitu joints have been rebuilt. The beam in the photo was found to be delaminating in 2017 and the calcite bleed can still be seen…
The funicular is currently closed for “maintenance” between 3rd and 9th November. This is the fourth time this has happened this year. As Graham Garfoot explained last week (see here), this is a portent of things to come. The complex tensioning system for the brackets which are holding the funicular structure together will require regular…
The Abrdn Property Income Trust (APIT) is now marketing Far Ralia for offers over £6.9m (see here), which is less than the recent £8m valuation, less than the £7.5m they bought it for five years ago and considerably less than the £12m they were asking for 15 months ago (see here). Deduct from the new…
Introduction to the current problems Prior to the funicular returning to service on 27th February (see here) Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE) made this announcement on 5th February (see here):- “Staff at Cairngorm Mountain have today (Wednesday 5 February) begun a series of maintenance activities on the electrical, mechanical and hydraulic systems that govern the…
I thought we lived in a world where science guided our decisions about how best to protect nature and the planet. Sadly this would appear not to be the case. Vested interests and the voices of the powerful now hold sway, with science only deployed by government where there is good reason to expect it’s…
Introduction Two weeks ago (see here), I made the case that BrewDog’s 2020 PR shot of their soon- to- be Lost Forest was not on Speyside at all, but had a much more west coast feel about it. Feedback to the post suggested that the location was Craig Farm in Glen Orchy, and some internet…
A couple of weeks ago I e-biked with Dave Morris over to look at Phase 2 of BrewDog’s Lost Forest which I had not visited since planting started there in 2024 – the year after over 50% of the trees planted in Phase I had died. Having shown that Oxygen Conservation’s claims that the Lost…
My thanks to the reader who, commenting on an old post, alerted me to Abrdn Property Income Trust (APIT)’s interim report and results for the half year to 30th June 2025, published on 30th September (see here). This confirms that APIT, which shareholders voted to wind up last year, has had difficultly selling off their land…
On Thursday 9th October, the same day Jim Fairlie the Scottish Government minister responsible announced a further 9 month delay in the “watered down” – excuse the phrase – muirburn licensing scheme, a “controlled fire” on Culblean Hill got out of control. This caused a wildfire which it took fire fighters over seven hours to…
[Author note. Andy was previously an Ecologist, now retired, working for an NGO in the Cairngorms. He is currently the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) vice-county recorder for East Inverness-shire (https://bsbi.org/easterness)]. Introduction Twinflower (Linnaea borealis) is an iconic and charismatic flower of the Caledonian Pinewood. It is a Nationally Scarce mat-forming creeping perennial,…