Just two months after Forestry England (FE) and Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) bought back the Camping in The Forest (CiCF) business from the Camping and Caravanning Club (see here), all 16 campsites are all being outsourced again. FLS is currently advertising 15 year leases, through a company called CDLH, for Cobleland in the Trossachs,…
Tag: Cairn Gorm
Following my post in March about Highland and Island Enterprise (HIE)’s proposal to build mountain bike tracks at Cairngorm (see here), parkswatch has not considered the matter further. Meantime the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) considered and approved the application (see here) at the end of May. I did not watch the planning committee meeting and…
Following the end of the 2021/22 Snowsports season, Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL), the company owned and controlled by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, has reimposed mandatory parking charges for the Coire Cas car park. The only difference from before being that the charge has been increased by no less than 50%. Customers’ reaction can be…
Last September I described how Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) released the Health and Safety file from the funicular construction nine months after I had requested it and how information within it undermined the official explanation to why the repairs to the funicular had been delayed (see here). With the recent revelations about how HIE…
It turns out that the financial disaster at Cairngorm is going to be even worse than Parkswatch predicted (see here). Not only are the funicular repair costs increasing but, as Martin Williams revealed in the Herald on Sunday 9 days ago (see here), there is no money to pay for this, let alone the annual…
Parkswatch readers will know that the Allt Coire na Ciste bridge was taken out of service in March 2021. CairnGorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) cited winter storm damage as being the reason for its dilapidated and unsafe condition. There’s no doubt that there was storm damage caused during the preceding winter but the bridge had…
This post considers Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL)’s second planning application at Cairn Gorm, to create new mountain bike trails in lower Coire Cas. The application (see here for planning papers), as I will explain, is as poorly documented and thought through as the first, which was to create two new roads on the mountain…
I had not intended to leave it two months before featuring another of Adam Watson’s photos (see here). He took this photo of the upper part of Coire Cas shortly before the Lurcher’s Gully Public Inquiry in 1981 at which he presented scientific evidence about the impact of ski developments at Cairn Gorm. Ten…
Two separate planning applications have been submitted on behalf of Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) to create new roads and tracks at Cairn Gorm both of which are currently being considered by the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA). The first is for two new hill roads (see here for papers), the second is to develop…
I have not so far blogged on the long-awaited (see here) masterplan for Cairn Gorm which Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) published last June (see here). Subtitled “Unlocking the potential of the Cairngorm Mountain Estate”, the masterplan is a vague and poorly drafted document: the operator, Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) is to explore “options…
On 28th December Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) issued this sledging policy on their website and a similar statement on their facebook page. It epitomises everything that is wrong with the current management Cairn Gorm and is unlawful. The statement appeared to have prompted by the bedlam at the patch of snow that has been…
The campervan park within the Coire na Ciste car park on Cairn Gorm (see here) and (here) will close for the season this coming weekend. Commercial failure or success? Data gathered from observations carried out each evening over two separate 1-week periods provides the evidence that the Ciste campervan park has been avoided by…
Following my post which highlighted how Highlands and Island Enterprise (HIE) and Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) were restricting access to the campervan park at Coire na Ciste to three time slots a day (see here), I am pleased to report that HIE/CMSL appear to have changed tack. According to the CMSL website (above) it…
The Aviemore and Glenmore Community Trust (AGCT) was formed in October 2017 “to seek community ownership of the Cairngorm Ski Area and Infrastructure, in order to ensure that it is more effectively managed for mountain visitors, employees, and the local and wider community”. That purpose was recorded at the end of the minutes of their…
This post takes a look at a recent attempt by Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE)/Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) to defend their new but low standard and barely used campervan facility in Coire na Ciste at Cairn Gorm. [Update: for how HIE/CMSL responded to some of the issues raised in this post (see here)]. …
Recently Highland and Islands Enterprise released the remains of the Health and Safety (H and S) File concerning the construction of the funicular railway required under the Construction, Design and Management (CDM) Regulations 1994. Having originally requested this file on 21/01/21 I received this email on 06/09/21 at 12.22p.m. from HIE:- I had been notified…
The Cairngorm National Park Planning Committee saw fit to grant Cairngorm Mountain [Scotland] Ltd (CMSL), Highland and Island Enterprise’s wholly owned subsidiary, permission to set up a Campervan Park in Coire na Ciste on Cairn Gorm. That consent was granted on 21 May 2021. CMSL indicated to the planning committee that they might be able…
On 25th August Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) announced (see here) that the re-opening of the funicular had been postponed until Autumn of 2022. Their news release was widely copied and pasted by various media outlets with little critical comment (with a few honourable exceptions, e.g (see here)). This post compares HIE’s latest claims about…
There are two good things to say about the publication two weeks ago of Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Ltd (CMSL’s) accounts (see here) for the year ending 31st March. The first is that they were made public just four months after the end of the financial year, well before the nine month deadline for private companies. …
Storms and construction work While my own walk round Cairn Gorm on my week in Speyside was affected by a heavy shower (see here) , I hate to think what might have happened had the torrential downpours which occurred in Grantown and Glen Banchor a few days before before (see here) had hit the mountain….
Following my post on the failed restoration of the Beauly Denny powerline access tracks (see here), someone asked on twitter “how would you have done this differently”? The answer lies just over the hill on the southern face of Carn Dearg Mor above Glen Feshie. There, Wild Land Ltd is in the process of removing…
On Sunday evening I went up to take a look at Cairn Gorm, the first time since the repair of the funicular started. I got a photo of the construction (see here) of the tube slides before the rain started. The steel support structure for the slides, referred to in the planning application, appear to…
Following my post on the construction of the tube slides in the Lower Coire Cas car park (see here), this post takes a look at the repair work to the funicular. Parkswatch has previously raised a number of significant concerns about the decision to repair the funicular, including the business case and likely costs, the…
There have been a number of significant developments over the last couple of months that relate to Cairn Gorm that have not, as yet, been covered by parkswatch. The Scottish Minister responsible for the disastrous decision to fork out £32.42 million over the next five years on repairing the funicular (see here) and who committed…
When I wrote post (6) (see here) in the series with this title I thought I had covered the majority of the issues with the funicular. I arrived at the conclusion that yes the repairs would work but with no idea of the longevity of those repairs. Job done. Then, on 04/05/2021 it was reported in…