Stakeholder Groups continue to view the ongoing situation on CairnGorm Mountain with dismay. This post takes a further look at how Cairngorm is being managed according to the lease agreement between Highlands and Islands Enterprise and their tenant, CairnGorm Mountain Ltd, a.k.a Natural Retreats. The lease contains this clause: Section 2: Maintenance Works to Premises….
Category: Cairngorms
Cairngorm is a beautiful mountain. It retains that beauty despite Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s record as custodians of the Cairngorm Estate during which landscape and wildlife, and all the people to whom these are important, have been shown scant respect. Despite the unnecessary clutter, rubbish and vehicle tracks the ski areas too retain their beauty…
Scotland has a long history of failed economic projects – with railways providing some prime examples. Within the land now designated as a National Park I am particularly fond of the proposals developed during the 1845 railway bubble. The Caledonian Northern Direct Company, chaired by the Duke of Montrose, proposed construction of a line…
On Friday the Cairngorms National Park Authority Planning Committee is due to consider the application by Natural Retreats, financed by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, for a dry ski slope at Cairngorm (see here). It hard to conceive of a more inappropriate development but officers have recommended that Board Members accept the proposal. The issues are…
I have followed some of the Parkswatch blogs about the awful hydro tracks around Glen Falloch (see here) and seen them for myself from the hills. In July 2017 we were staying in Lochcarron and I was horrified to see a hydro scheme at Coulags at the start of the walk up Maol Chean-dearg. This…
Parkswatch has commented several times on the differences between our two National Parks and the evidence now suggests that they are going in two different directions, one generally positive the other disastrous. This was very evident from their Board Meetings which took place in September. The agenda of the September Board Meeting of the Loch…
I had previously arranged to go for a walk to look at the state of Cairngorm yesterday. Coincidentally, this was a day after HIE announced (see here for News Release) that the funicular would be closed for another month to allow “further investigation” of cracks that have appeared and in the same week that the…
Alan Brattey here explains the background to the current crisis at Cairngorm and his comments as reported in the Strathy. The CairnGorm Mountain Funicular Railway was constructed as a replacement for the ageing Carpark and White Lady Chairlifts, at a cost of £19.54m in public funding and EU funding. Add non-construction costs to that and…
Scotland has almost no natural treeline and lacks the montane scrub zone which is found in other mountainous areas such as Norway and the Alps because of a long history of overgrazing (by sheep and deer) and excessive burning. It is therefore very welcome that the Cairngorms National Park Authority attaches a high priority to…
Three weeks ago the Cairngorms National Park Authority decided to approve the retrospective planning application for a section of the unlawful Glen Banchor track. Its a positive thing that members of the CNPA planning Committee are so concerned about the proliferation of hill tracks – Dave Fallows was right to describe the Glen Banchor…
The consultation on the draft Cairngorms Nature Action Plan closes tomorrow on Friday 14th September. A month ago (see here) I considered the context for the plan and the proposed priorities for landscape scale conservation: farmland, freshwater restoration, woodland expansion and peatland . This post will look at the other two professed aims of the…
In August of 2017 HIE initiated a clean-up operation on CairnGorm Mountain. A number of environmental groups had campaigned for this action for years and with over 12 months having elapsed since the commencement of the clean-up, it is time now to examine the results and the value for money obtained for the input of…
Following coverage of Highland and Islands Enterprise and Natural Retreats failures to act on health and safety recommendations from independent consultants about the ski life infrastructure (see here), HIE refused to provide a copy of the latest report (they had provided two previous reports), citing commerical confidentiality and intellectual property rights. Malcom Garfoot appealed and…
I have been staying in the Saas Tal, which I have found out now markets itself as the free republic of holidays, the last few days. On top of the basic campsite charge of 14 swiss francs (£11.20) a night I have also paid 7 swiss francs (£5.60) in tourist tax. That increases the basic charge…
Hydroelectric power generation features prominently in the firmament of the renewable energy icons of the ‘green movement’ and indeed among its most avid supporters, there is almost a zealous fervency about it, bordering on religiosity about its promulgation, indeed one tantamount to a holy dictum of hydro. There is no doubt, in a political environment…
Highlands and Islands Enterprise sold Cairngorm Mountain Ltd (CML) to Natural Assets Investments Ltd in 2014. The ostensible thinking behind the sale was that the Natural Retreats group of companies would bring new investment to Cairngorm and make it a profitable business. HIE probably also saw this as an opportunity to recover some of the…
After recent criticisms of SNH on Parkswatch, for example their failure to assess properly the impact of all seven Glen Etive hydro schemes on the landscape (see here), it is a pleasure to report on a consultation which could, if the proposals were widely adopted, make a real difference to landscape protection. The consultation is…
The consultation on the second five year Cairngorms Nature Action Plan was launched on 20th June and closes on Friday 14th September at 5pm. The draft plan is easy to read (just 36 pages with big print and lots of photos) and there in an online survey form which focuses on whether the aims, objectives…
Natural Retreats, the operator of the CairnGorm Mountain business, introduced compulsory parking charges at the end of June 2018. These parking charges replaced a voluntary scheme, that had been in operation since 2012, because insufficient funds were being donated, according to Natural Retreats. The amounts donated during each year since 2013 were: £10,426, £11,174, £11,427,…
At the end of June the Cairngorms National Park Authority Planning Committee considered the responses to its public consultation on Local Development Plan, the Main Issues Report, which has previously been covered on Parkswatch (see here for example). There were 331 responses and these are summarised and considered in a 247 page report to the…
After my post on the state of the Coire na Ciste (see here), I have been comparing the state of the ski infrastructure higher up the hill with what is required under the terms of the lease between Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Cairngorm Mountain Ltd dated 11th June 2014 (see here for lease). The…
While the central Pyrenees has many beautiful natural mountain lakes, there has been significant hydro development for over 100 years and many lakes have been created or extended by dams. We came across hydro schemes on many days of our two week walk, even in remote places. In an interesting article (see here –…
The French Pyrenean National Park and the Ordesa and Mont Perdido National Park are much smaller than our two National Parks in Scotland but surrounded by large buffer zones where the National Park influences what activities take place and how land is managed. In the National Parks themselves there is no permanent human habitation and…
The Ordesa gorge is one of the great natural wonders of the Pyrenees, a sort of European version of the Grand Canyon but carved out by ice not water. It was designated as Spain’s first National Park a hundred years ago in August 1918 and since then has also been designated a World Heritage Site…
Between 18th and 21st September the Cairngorms National Park Authority are hosting the Europarc conference (see here) for “protected area professionals” . The theme of this year’s conference is “reconnecting young people with nature”. All attendees are being encouraged to bring a young person as part of the International Year of Young People and my…