I will come to National Parks later, but Dr Catherine Calderwood is no fool. She didn’t get to become to be Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer by not have a clue about how viruses work. Her drive to Fife, her stay overnight in her second home and subsequent resignation tell us, I believe, four things: First…
Tag: visitor management
I was pleased to have this letter published in the Herald today. Its got nothing to do with National Parks but everything to do with what’s happening in them, as this post will explain. Until our governments set up contact tracing and testing like South Korea and China have done, there will be no end…
With half the country in panic mode, I was pleased I took a break from my book and attended the scheduled Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board meeting on Monday (see here). What the tattered remnants of the meeting showed is that this is a Public Authority only interested in itself and its…
On 16th December, just before the “dead” holiday period the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park launched a six week consultation on a new Outdoor Recreation Plan (ORP). The consultation closes at 5pm today (see here to respond). Mary Jack, earlier this month, considered the discussion at the Board Meeting prior to the consultation launch,…
Not a week goes seems to go by without some group of business interests claiming they are paying too much tax. Ten days ago the operators of small scale hydro schemes, many of which are quite large, were back at it (see here for example). Not content with the enormous subsidies that they have received…
I was pleased to get this letter into the Badenoch and Strathspey Herald on Thursday in response to their excellent coverage the week before about the potential for camping byelaws to be introduced into the Cairngorms National Park Authority. While it was good to see Grant Moir, the CNPA Chief Executive (above) deny there…
Alistair Bell’s open letter published on 2nd January (see here) was fascinating as an insider’s tale of what has happened to downhill skiing on Cairn Gorm. But I disagree with his final conclusion. Basically, he tackles the old issue “Cock-up or Conspiracy” and decides it was a conspiracy along the lines of the Gas Lighting…
In Autumn last year, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) put the next update of the Local Management Plan for the Strathspey Forest out for consultation until March 2020. Please look at the documents (see here) and send your views into FLS. This forest is important because it attracts a lot of tourist visits, 350,000 last…
The meeting on 9th December got off to a late start as several of the Board members were late for the 9.30 am kick off – change from the usual 10.00 am start. The Agenda was very full with only one break from start to finish. This was a very welcome change from last year’s…
The main investment in new visitor infrastructure that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority has made this year is in upgrading facilities on their land at Tarbet and Inveruglas on the west shore of Loch Lomond. Tarbet featured in no less than 6 different sections of the Annual Operational Plan Progress Report submitted…
The day after turnout for the General Election was 67% for the UK as a whole and 68.1% in Scotland its worth considering more lessons from Australia (see here) where voting is compulsory for all government elections and referenda. There too, the lower house, equivalent to the UK’s House of Commons, while like us having…
The Scottish Government approved the camping byelaws in January 2016 on condition that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority would create new camping infrastructure. 300 new camping places were promised for the first year and the Scottish Government delayed implementation of the byelaws by a year to give the LLTNPA time to put…
This post looks at how little of the ORP 2013-17 (see here for plan) has been fulfilled from a Water User’s perspective. At the time of writing this article there has been no sign of a new or even ‘refreshed’ Outdoor Recreation Plan to replace the outdated 2013-17 ORP. The Loch Lomond and the Trossachs…
The successful challenge to Argyll and Bute’s car parking charges on Mull Back in April the local community in Mull and Iona protested against the imposition of new £9 a day car parking charges by Argyll and Bute Council at Fionnphort (see here). Last week they forced the Council to back down, in part it…
Last year in the Pyrenees, after a couple of hours walking west from Bujaruelo along the GR11 we came across a large – 50 plus – group of young people packing up camp after a night of very heavy rain. I was struck at the time that you would be very unlikely to see such…
I have recently returned from my second walking trip to the Pyrenees (see here for links to posts last year). On the French side Public transport up into the Pyrenean valleys from the rail network are poor and we had to wait a couple of hours in Gedre for a connection to Gavarnie with…
The public accountability of our Public Authorities has, over the last twenty years, been reduced to a thread. Part of the reason for this is that journalists are, with a few honourable exceptions, no longer employed to report on what our Public Authorities are up to. The days of the media regularly reporting on Board…
The papers for the next Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board meeting on Monday 18th March were published last week (see here). There are some good things in them, particularly the papers on “Wild Park” and a new Forest Strategy (see here), which I will consider further in due course. There are also…
A year after my post on how the signs in Glen Doll at the head of Glen Clova contravened access rights (see here) I revisited the glens. I was pleased to find that two of the three signs I had commented on have been removed. A number of regular visitors to the Glen commented on my…
I am pleased to report that following my post in November about the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority’s (LLTNPA’s) unlawful application of the camping byelaws (see here), that they have started to address the issue of unlawful “No camping” within the National Park”. This post will first take a look at the law…
[This post is partially in response to comments made by Ray Sefton on Drennan Watson’s post “Time for a re-think at Cairn Gorm” https://parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2018/12/05/time-for-a-re-think-at-cairngorm/”] Rights of public access, as established by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, apply to all ground around the Ptarmigan restaurant and beyond, to the far reaches of land and water…
There are very serious legal issues about the way in which the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority have tried to implement the camping byelaws which up until now they have tried to sweep under the carpet. The most significant legal issue arose early last year when the LLTNPA was forced to drop its…
While the move to develop a tourist tax gathers apace in Edinburgh and is now being advocated for other cities (see here for article by Marianne Taylor in Herald) there continues to be silence on this issue from our National Park Authorities. The issue of inadequate investment in tourist infrastructure in the countryside is as…
In January I blogged about the estate management plans the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority has been developing with some landowners (see here) and which I had requested be made public last October. As a result of my appeal to the Information Commissioner, in July the LLTNPA “voluntarily” published some information on Integrated…
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…