I spent last week in the Lake District, the first part camping with friends on the east side of Lake Coniston. The small campsite where we stayed is run by a friendly farm and is only let out to groups, perfect for meeting up with friends after lockdown. The campsite was situated in a clearing…
Tag: visitor management
The closure of public toilets in Scotland, which had been going on for years, gathered pace under austerity (see here and here for example), with hardly a murmur of political dissent. The Victorians – who knew the value of public conveniences, from both a public health and a tourism perspective – would have been appalled. …
Ten days ago I was out walking the hills around Glen Tarken and parked in the first layby on the A85 heading west from St Fillans. The entire shore of Loch Earn, together with the villages of St Fillans and Lochearnhead at either end, are part of the Trossachs Camping Management zone where camping is…
After being awarded an extra £3m by the Scottish Government for 2021-22, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority decided at their meeting on 15th March to delay deciding how to spend £965,000 of this until their June meeting (see here). One Board Member did ask Pete Wightman, the Director of Corporate Services, about…
After its Board Meeting, which approved a large increase of expenditure on visitor management (see here), the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority held a pre-season Stakeholder Briefing Session on 26th March to tell people about their plans “to manage visitor pressures when lockdown restrictions begin to ease”. Too late for genuine consultation, it…
In 2014 the Land Reform Review Group published its report, the land of Scotland and the Common Good (see here). This contained a short section on access rights which concluded that generally they were working well: Since then, access rights have been challenged as never before, with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority leading…
The Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authorities (NPAs) were both awarded significant increases in funding in the Scottish Government’s budget (see here), a significant turn-around in fortunes. In September the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) reported a significant hole in their finances, with a projected deficit – after yet…
There is a case for using car park charges as an income stream to invest in visitor infrastructure and also to encourage people to visit by public transport, but that is not what is happening in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. Instead, our public authorities have embarked on an unprincipled free-for-all extortion racket…
The planning system in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park is so bad that normally it can be difficult to laugh. But regular readers might just enjoy this tale of an application to install a glorified tap at the back of the toilet block at Rowardennan…………….. The story, I believe, begins in 2018 when…
In September I visited the Pentlands Regional Park twice and was quite concerned about how access was being managed in response to the influx of people into the countryside. Parking was restricted, toilets closed and there was a proliferation of “no” signs (see here). Apart from some quite helpful signage about social distancing and one…
On 21 Oct the Herald newspaper published a letter from myself about the need for the Scottish Government to revise the plans for dualling the A9 trunk road, currently under construction, so that new rest and parking areas can be provided. Such areas are the norm in many other European countries. To bring Scotland up…
Recently a new publication appeared on the LLTNPA website under Our Plans and Publications. This is headed “Indicative Regional Spatial Strategy (Draft) – 2020” (see here). The following includes excerpts from it. You will see that there are areas included for potential development where there has already been controversy and public outcry, notably proposals for…
Ben A’an is a honeypot for hill walking, especially for “beginners”. Fantastic views, steep and craggy enough to provide a sense of adventure and not too far from urban populations, it is many people’s first hill. It has been very popular for some time and has become even more so due to the corona crisis. …
Two weeks ago I spoke to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board (see here) about the urgent need to consider improved visitor infrastructure over the winter as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, I tried to draw attention to deficiencies in papers on Visitor Management and Litter Prevention that…
Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s consultation on its draft vision for a masterplan at Cairn Gorm (see here) closed on Monday. The next day, at 8.45 a.m on a wet Tuesday morning in mid-September, how many campervans could be seen in the Coire Cas car park? The numbers were probably higher than normal as the more…
The Dirty Camping debate in the Scottish Parliament On Wednesday, almost an hour after it was scheduled and after a very long day, MSPs started to debate Murdo Fraser’s motion on Dirty Camping (see here) at 6pm. Although the chamber appeared mostly empty, a number of MSPs contributed online and the debate went on until…
The Scottish Parliament this afternoon debates a motion (see here) by Murdo Fraser on Dirty Camping, just the second members’ debate since the start of the corona crisis. While the Scottish Parliament increasingly appears to have little real power, what is said today could still be very important for framing any debate on camping and campervanning…
If you did not hear the Call Kaye programmme on 18th August, “Is it time to stop moaning about tourists”, it is highly recommended listening. It is available on iplayer (see here) for another 9 days (from 1 min 20 secs for an hour) and, after all the moaning, mainly featured people who were advocating…
In 2018 the Scottish Campaign for National Parks (I am on the Committee) carried out a review of Scotland’s Regional Parks (see here). In large part this was prompted because no-one else seemed concerned about what was happening or the lost potential. With Councils now pulling, or threatening to pull, their support for Clyde Muirshiel,…
Following my posts on how litter (see here) and traffic management issues (see here) are being used to attack access rights, Perth and Kinross Council has now gone further than even the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority has dared to do. The move could undermine access rights across Scotland. The comments on thei…
A few weeks ago some friends went in their campervan to Glen Muick, on Deeside, and stopped off overnight in the lower part of the glen. They were woken in the early hours by the sound of passing traffic. They were stunned by the number of visitors, remarking that it was just like the Lake…
Since lockdown was relaxed, it seems hardly a day has gone past when there has not been some national media coverage claiming that visitors have been responsible for a wave of litter that is said to engulfing the countryside. In the vast majority of cases visitors have been condemned, abused even, sometimes by people purporting…
Morag and I went up Cairn Gorm Thursday 6th August via Windy Ridge and down the Fiaccaill of Coire Cas, all in glorious weather. We started out just after 10.30 but even so met numerous folk going up on Windy Ridge and, even by that time, others coming down. On the whole route we met,…
In the last ten days I have travelled up and back down the A82 and, as usual, stopped off in a few popular visitor destinations to see how they are being managed. Toilet provision At Tarbet it was good to see that mobile toilets had been provided by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park…
On 13th July Highlands and Islands Enterprise announced that Cairngorm Mountain was re-opening today (see here). While the Scottish Government had been advising people they could travel unlimited distances by car since the weekend of 4th July, HIE decided to keep the Coire Cas car park, the most popular access point to the northern side…