On Sunday, hoping to have missed the worst of the thunderstorms, I set with my daughter for a two day round of the ring of Tarff as training for her first mountain marathon. I had not thought of checking the state of the Bruar hydro restoration (see here) and (here) and had planned to approach…
Tag: hill tracks
Anyone passing through the Drumochter, even in snow, should be able to see the scars on the hillside between the summit of the pass and north Drumochter lodge but far fewer people are aware of the scars and failed restoration hidden behind the shelter belts on either side of this. Its taken me six months…
The Allt Essan and Auchessan hydro schemes lie on the north side of Glen Dochart south of the Munros Meall Glas and Sgiath Chuil. Both were approved by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority in December 2014 but the Auchessan design was subseqently amended in 2015 (see here and here). While both schemes were…
The Cairngorms National Park Authority meeting today has a fairly limited agenda (see here): an informative report from their Chief Executive on what has been going on; a four year corporate plan, a one year operational plan together, somewhat strangely, with a (welcome) paper on not paying Board Members who fail to attend meetings; a communications…
Yesterday, on way up to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority meeting on the Cononish goldmine, I stopped off to take another look at the Derrydarroch hydro scheme in Glen Falloch – I had not been to the powerhouse area for over a year. I don’t recall seeing the top sign on the…
Two weeks ago, when I was in Glen Clova, I went to take a closer look at some of the tracks I had seen while doing a round of the Glen Prosen skyline (see here). This post takes a further look at what has been happening. None of the five tracks featured here appears on…
The Scottish Government’s Planning Bill and the CNPA response In December, the Scottish Government published its Planning Bill and this is now going through Parliament and will be considered this month by the Local Government Committee. While in the Memorandum accompanying the Planning Bill the Scottish Government clearly states “The purpose of planning is to…
Further evidence of the political power of landowners in our National Parks was revealed yesterday when Kate Forbes, the SNH MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, held a reception for the Gift of Grouse http://www.giftofgrouse.com/ at the Scottish Parliament. This was preceded by an excellent post from Raptor Persecution Scotland (see here) lambasting the claims…
Over the last year Parkswatch has featured a number of posts about the destruction of the landscape at Drumochter, including: the unrestored Beauly Denny construction track between Dalnaspidal and Drumochter (see here); the failure of Scottish and Southern Electric to restore the ground at Drumochter as required by the Beauly Denny planning consent from the…
Twelve days ago I went with Dave Morris for a walk around Beinn Ghuilbin on the Kinveachy Estate, south of Carrbridge, after a reader had reported seeing some dire new forest tracks there. I had never walked around this part of the estate before but had been keen to visit for many years because it…
While the Cairngorms National Park Authority took a significant step forward on planning enforcement and consequently the credibility of the planning system a couple of weeks ago (see here), the planning system in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park fell further into disrepute on 18th December when a permanent access track to the Ledard…
For the last 18 months parkswatchscotland has been highlighting the failures of both our National Parks to protect the landscape and more specifically to ensure that planning conditions are enforced. On Friday the Cairngorms National Park Planning Committee, on which all Board Members sit, approved a plan to address the issues. Its extremely welcome and…
After my visit a few weeks ago to Glen Bruar and my post on the restoration work on the pipeline (see here), the Cairngorms National Park Authority indicated they had some further documentation about the restoration works and would place these on the planning portal. They did so a couple of weeks ago (see here)….
Following my post on the new and “upgraded” hill track in Glen Banchor (see here), the Cairngorms National Park Authority has informed Dave Morris and myself that they will fully investigate what has happened and feed back to us what action they can take. This is most welcome. I also reported to them that works…
Since my post in June (see here) on Forest Enterprise’s “upgrade” of the Coilessan Glen forest track, I have been trying to get to the root of what has gone wrong. First I established that no planning application or prior notification had been received by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority, then I…
Earlier this year, the owner of the Pitmain estate, who appears to be Abdul Majid Jafar, bought the Glen Banchor and Strone Estate behind Newtonmore. I say “appears” because the information on Pitmain Estate Ltd at Companies House fails to declare who has significant control over the company. While Abdul Majid Jafar resigned as a Director…
Following my two posts last December about the destruction caused by the hydro scheme in Glen Bruar (see here) and (here), I took a jog up the glen on Saturday. I was prompted to do so after planning staff at the Cairngorms National Park Authority were kind enough to inform me – unprompted – that significant…
Gleann Casaig runs from the east shore of the Glen Finglas Reservoir, north of Brig O’Turk, up to the ridge between Ben Ledi and Ben Vane in the Trossachs. The glen forms part of the Woodland Trust’s Glen Finglas estate and part of the Great Trossachs Forest project which in 2015 was designated as Scotland’s…
Just when it appeared that the Cairngorms National Park Authority was starting to get a grip on the proliferation of hill tracks which has blighted the Cairngorms landscape, they have blown it. Faced with a proposal by WildLand Ltd, the company controlled by Anders Povlsen, the Danish billionaire to create almost 15 miles of new…
Last Saturday, sitting in a hut in the Snowdonia National Park, I came across a Guardian travel supplement “Adventures in Wild Britain” which featured ten places to experience Britain’s most stunning wildlife. One of the places was Glen Falloch at the head of Loch Lomond (see here). Regular readers and anyone who hillwalks there,…
This post will consider the failure of Scottish and Southern Electric to date to restore the landscape caused by the Beauly Denny construction works in the northern section of the Drumochter. A central planning assumption behind the Beauly Denny was that once the construction phase was complete the land would be restored to it…
If you see a digger in the hills……………report it! On Friday, I went for a run up Geal Charn and went just beyond the summit because the views then open up down Loch Ericht. There was a digger a little way to the south on what used to be a stalkers path into the Fraoch…
After the extensive coverage parkswatch gave to the destruction caused by engineering works in Coire Cas last year (see here for example), at the end of August a small group of us went to have a look at how the restoration work was going. In my view while there have been some improvements, there is…
At the end of August, after a stravaig over the east Drumochter hills, I looped back to Dalwhinnie through the Drumochter pass, the idea being to combine enjoyment with a look at the effectiveness of the restoration of the land along the Beauly Denny. Just beyond Dalnaspidal and hidden behind the A9 shelterbelt, I came…
Retiring Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board Member and former SNP councillor Fergus Wood was featured in the Stirling Observer last week due to his alleged failure to abide by planning conditions set by the National Park Authority for the hydro scheme at Ledard Farm which he is reported as describing in the…