[Completed 26th December] This has been some year – of enterprise, surprise, achievement, investment, determination and a growing focus on the activity and marine tourism that plays so strongly to Argyll’s unrivalled spectrum of natural resources.
For Argyll is nominating ten memorable and significant contributions to this development for Christmas and will nominate ten more at the close of the year.
In between we hope readers will use comments to make their own nominations, so that, between us, we try to capture most of what has been remarkable in Argyll and Bute this year.
Biggest Step Change: Argyll and the Isles Tourism
With 360 degree buy-in from local marketing groups, to Argyll and Bute Councils past and present, to VisitScotland, to major industry players in the transport and hotels sector – and with the fuel of ideas, energy and will in the tank, Argyll and the Isles Tourism was THE game changer for Argyll and Bute in 2012.
This could not have been more obvious at its two major manifestations during the year.
There was its tourism summit at Portavadie Marina [team photo above], with Kintyre Express running a delegate shuttle from Tarbert – both businesses benchmarks for the quality Argyll and the Isles Tourism is driving upwards with the energetic commitment of the industry.
Then it crafted Argyll’s first ever appearance at the national tourism Expo – which was a genuine triumph. We went over to Edinburgh to check out how they were doing and, as we reported at the time, the Argyll stand [below] was party central, the place to be, alive and excited with ideas and sparking with the static crackle of the will to work to make it happen. Those manning the stand over the two day event were clearly there to do business for Argyll – and business was done.
Suddenly there was hope – hope that Argyll was actually on the move, on the map, with a sense of direction, the right direction, and the legs for the long game.
Everyone and every organisation connected with this major step change is to be warmly congratulated.
Best New Kid on The Block: BOWFest
Storming out of the West in 2013, an Argyll Estates initiative with the active support of Argyll and the Isles Tourism, came BOWFest, a September shoulder-season spectacular of the best of the west in music, food, drink, activities, arts and crafts.
Staged at Inveraray Castle, this event arrived in seven league boots – with one bound it was as if it had always been here.
With phenomenally affordable tickets, it hurled band after soaring band into the hordes in the music tent, with a storming headline performance from the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. The best of the legendary malt whiskies from the west of Scotland were to the fore, in the knowledgeable hands of Loch Fyne Whiskies and the best of Argyll’s local produce – Food From Argyll – was presented and enthusiastically devoured.
Transport specialists – like CalMac and Kintyre Express were there – focusing attention on the islands, peninsulas and expeditions that are here to be experienced in and from Argyll waters.
The audience – of all ages – embraced this event with alacrity and made it their own at once. Next year’s event has the best possible word of mouth to build from; and promises to be a real powerhouse in marketing Argyll.
Best Regeneration Town: Campbeltown
Campbeltown has been a one-town Tale of Two Cities in 2012.
It was the worst of times when the Rural Scotland in Focus 2012 report from the Scottish Agricultural College’s Rural Policy Centre named it – jointly with Dunoon – as the most vulnerable remote community in Scotland.
It was the best of times in a very different reality, with serious investment in the town from both the private and public sectors.
Southworth, the company that developed the unique Machrihanish Dunes golf course, beside Machrihanish Golf Club’s existing Old Tom Morris designed course, reopened two of the classic grand hotels in and just outside Campbeltown, both after major refurbishment.
These are the Royal Hotel on the waterfront in Campbeltown, below; and the Ugadale Hotel at Machrihanish, west of the town.
West Coast Motors, with Scottish Citylink, invested in superb new supercoaches which make it possible to run five return trips a day between Campbeltown and Glasgow in the main season and four in the off season.
Its sister company, Kintyre Express, has increased its fleet of small fast passenger ferries running between Campbeltown and Ballycastle in Northern Ireland by one boat a year; and has significantly built its golf charters business.
Transport Scotland has just agreed to support the long needed weekend flights – at realistic times – into Campbeltown Airport.
Argyl and Bute Council has invested in a new all weather sports pitch, beside the lovely lochside Aqualibrium library and swimming pool with a view to disbelieve in; in intelligently sited and visually fitting housing across the road from these facilities; and is now committed to the necessary upgrading of the marina at the town’s harbour. The glorious confection of Campbeltown Town Hall is also to be restored with LEADER funding.
And the town has started to believe in itself – the most potent development of all.
It has its own online community forum, the well used Kintyre Forum. It has a series of well supported annual activity-based events: MOKRun [Mull of Kintyre Run - a half marathon and a 10k run; MOKFest - a music festival; MOKBike - a bicycle challenge event. The renowned cyclist Graham Obree is to test his new invention - a horizontal attitude high speed bike on the ultra long, cold war test runway at Campbeltown airport, formerly RAF Machrihanish and now the subject of a community buy out.
Then there's the Wee Picturehouse. above - the oldest working cinema in the UK and a spot of visual frivolity and promise on the loch front of this grand merchant town.
There is work to be done, which everyone - including the new Kintyre and Gigha marketing group - understands and is getting down to doing. The key change is in the arrival of self belief. Campbeltown is on the way up.
Most Ambitious Community: Rosneath west peninsula communities
This is an extended community of five small villages on the west side of the lovely Rosneath peninsula, leading to Loch Long on its west shore and bordering the Queen's Harbour of the Gare Loch on its eastern shore, looking across to the UK submarine base at Faslane.
Cove and Kilcreggan [above[, often used as the shorthand name for the collective, have many major scores to their credit already, in taking responsibility for their lives. They took over Cove Burgh Hall which they bought from Argyll and Bute Council in 2000 as a beautiful but badly neglected structure in need of serious repair.
Grand as it is, it has become a much used and living community facility and the hub of life and entertainment in the peninsula.
The hall played its part in another innovation from this community - the fabulously named Sea Change Festival which they ran 8th – 10th June, with a programme full of invention, surprise, mystery, delight - like Sea Shanties on the shore at Kilcreggan. [We've not got the singing but the photograph below shows the shore.]
Then, recently, the Community also took on the former Cove library, when the Council departed from that as well. The library service had been located in the hall.
With this sort of robust independence, it is unsurprising – if still breathtaking – that this resourceful community, led in this instance by the Rosneath Peninsula West Community Development Trust, under Chair, Murdo Macdonald, is planning Britain’s biggest community wind farm, which will require them to invest £15 million.
This project, sensitively sited, will see its five turbines wholly owned by the community and generating substantial income for years for the communities of Cove, Kilcreggan, Peaton and Portkil.
When in operation, the wind farm will be capable of generating 11.5MW, well in advance of Britain’s current largest community wind farm in Oxfordshire, which can do 6.5MW; and ahead of one of 9MW in planning for Lewis in the Western Isles.
This group of west peninsula communities – Cove, Kilcreggan, Peaton, Ardpeaton and Portkil – is also a finalist in the Scotland-wide Creative Places Awards, with winners to be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday 23rd January 2013 at The Byre Theatre in St Andrews.
The specific award they are up for is the one with the greatest number of finalists – five from a total of nine.for places with under 2,500 people – because this one has five finalists. The other four are Gatehouse of Fleet, The Glenkens, Pathhead and Unst. The winner will receive £50,000.
Best Event: Scottish Islands Peaks Race
This mighty annual challenge brings fell-runners and sailors from all over Britain to Oban, for its start at the Sailing Club.
The event provides the most testing of physical challenges on land and water for the participants; brings together two types of sportsfolk whose paths or wakes would otherwise not cross; and showcases Argyll and the Isles’- and Arran’s – natural resources of islands, mountains and fabulous sailing grounds – in use – like no other event could possibly match.
Teams usually are of five people – three sailors and two runners. Competition is fierce and good runners are head hunted. There is also an allrounders class – for sailors who can run.
In what is a theatre of two to three days of non-stop physical contest, the runners rest during the sea passages and the sailors get their heads down while the runners are taking on the series of iconic peaks the race programme contains.
Every second counts – to the point that sail trimming and reading the wind are critical and require constant concentration and action.
The race as a whole starts in Oban at the whistle for a short hill run [above]. A dinghy from each yacht is waiting at a given point on the shore to recover returning runners – and this too is hot competition. The positioning of the dinghy, the ease and speed of the runners in getting into a rowing boat and out of it onto a yacht – and the strength and skill of the sailors’ rowing are where key seconds are won and lost.
Each boat leaves its mooring off the sailing club as soon as it’s ready – and the growing fleet scuds and tacks to the northern exit from Oban Bay [shot from 2012 race below, with the Northern Lighthouse Board's Pharos showing a touch of graceless behaviour in shouldering her way through the fleet]. They then keep racing across the Firth of Lorne and into Salen on the Isle of Mull and well up the Sound of Mull.
The runners are rowed ashore in short order to run up Mull’s Munro, Ben More, before charging back to be rowed out to their yachts, with the sailors taking the baton for a passage race south through tricky waters into Craighouse on the Isle of Jura.
Guess what comes next. Yes, indeed. The runners are decanted again to run up the legendary Paps of Jura, with the sailors grabbing some shut eye before their own next race south round the exposed Mull of Kintyre and into Lamlash on the Isle of Arran.
Off go the runners again – this time for the killer last run up Goat Fell. Back aboard, they can at last collapse while the sailors carry the final responsibility for the race across the outer Firth of Clyde and into Troon in Ayrshire.
This is the race to the death or the win, with the multihulls, dedicated racers and cruisers dicing as ruthlessly as only sailors do.
The 2012 race saw the Craig brothers from Campbeltown with John Grant, in Bequia, race a grandstand finish against Moby J, Sea Fever and Dorothea all the way in to the inner harbour at Troon. They finished second in their class and 4th overall in a fleet of around 50 boats – a mighty performance in the this mightiest of multi-sport challenges.
Most Engaged Public Sector Company: CalMac
Caledonian MacBrayne, operator of the Clyde and Hebridean Ferry Services has, over the last year, become markedly and energetically engaged in the efforts of Argyll and the Isles Tourism to develop the local industry’s economic performance.
Already in discussion with the tourism body in support for and partnership in a variety of possible initiatives, it made a major appearance at BOWFest in September, in partnership with Argyll and the Isles Tourism and VisitScotland – at a large and well manned stall, attracting plenty of attention for its ferry services to the Argyll islands.
The company then sponsored the headline performance by the Red Hot Chilli Pipers in the event’s breathtaking music programme.
In the following month it was a sponsor for the Tiree Wave classic – the annual international competition for boardsailors in the surf off the white sand beaches of the sunshine isle out in the Atlantic.
In the same month CalMac offered fare discounts to assist competitors getting their equipe over to the Isle of Mull for the 153-mile, three-day Mull Rally – much of it at night.
There is a continuing discussion between the company and the tourism body, with energetic future collaboration between them becoming a settled view.
CalMac is an iconic historical feature on the Scottish west coast, with its immediately recognisable branded ferries plying everywhere you can think of.
Oban’s website became famous for the number of visitors it attracted who went there to watch the live webcam showing the CalMac ferries coming and going constantly in the bay, with their berth at the South Pier.
CalMac may be iconic but it is also fighting for its life.
The Scottish Government – partly in search of cost cuts and partly short-sightedly new-fangled with the notion of shrugging off responsibilities through privatisation, is known to be interested in seeing the Clyde and Hebridean routes go the way of those for the Northern Isles which it handed to major privateer, Serco, earlier this year.
British public services are almost inherently imperfect and unsatisfactory – but CalMac has an embedded brand loyalty which, while not exclusive, gives it real support in the battle to survive. This support will be enhanced by its vigorous support for tourism development along the west coast and in Argyll, which has been widely welcomed.
The company also understands that it is in a collaborative game. It has to market the islands in order to market its routes; and so its own advertising campaigns must sell its destinations – which is a positive benefit for all parties concerned.
Best Campaign: Argyll First’s Sign for the A83
Campaigns are the middle ground between passive democracy and direct action. As such they could not be more important as a means of effecting crucial change resisted by governments through ignorance, carelessness, vested interest or pragmatism.
2012 has been marked by a well considered campaign on an issue crucial to so much of Argyll – the long neglected A83.
This is the arterial road offering the only access to a great swathe of Argyll and the preferred access to much of the rest of it.
It is a dilatory two-step, partly trunked and partly untrunked, in an indefensible discrimination presently under consultation as to whether or not it should be fully trunked, There can be no debate on this no but views must be logged.
The A83′s physical schizophrenia left it neglected in both its guises and in serious need of repair from both public sector parents – Transport Scotland for the trunked section to Kennacraig; and Argyll and Bute Council for the section running on from Kennacraig to Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre.
Worse, the road – at the mountain pass of Rest and Be Thankful in the trunked section – is also increasingly vulnerable to landslides. It is liable to be closed in both directions when a landslip occurs, with the consequent damage to the local economy in lost visits; in abandoned accommodation bookings; in more expensive freight costs with a massive 60 mile diversion; and in its perceived unreliability for travel companies who might otherwise schedule parts of Argyll in their itineraries.
Argyll First – a group of three councillors who together represent the long stretch of Argyll and the Isles from the Mull of Kintyre to Mid Argyll and whose raison d’etre is to put the needs of Argyll above all – took up the cause.
Councillors Donald Kelly, John McAlpine and Dougie Philand ran a simultaneous online and hard copy petition – Sign for the A83.
They publicised it; they got hard copy forms into shops across the area; they lobbied and sought the support of the business community – where they found more than willing listeners.
They got the public support they knew was there, if led – and they took a petition to the Public Petitions Committee at the Scottish Parliament.
The petition made its impact, was heard by the committee, supported by local politicians of all parties who gave evidence in its hearings.
This escalation of awareness of the multiple impacts on Argyll of this unable road had further consequences.
When yet another landslide incapacitated the A83 again, towards the end of the summer season, Transport Scotland set up a Task Force and commissioned a study into possible long term solutions. There is no doubt that Transport Scotland saw both these initiatives as no more than palliatives to quiet a restive population – but they are learning better.
The local representatives from Argyll First; to Argyll and the Isles Tourism; to the Mid Argyll Chamber of Commerce; to marketing groups; to transport companies, haulage and freight companies; and to road users like the motor sport [hill climb] Friends of Rest and Be Thankful, have shown serious commitment to real action and are not going to be satisfied with anything less, or be gulled into agreeing to the wrong solution.
In the meantime an emergency diversion route is being readied [above] on the foundations of the old military road up Glen Croe, below the troubled section of the trunk road.
Argyll First is not going away on this issue. It has been the consistent commitment and determination of three honest men that has made the difference in getting public and business opinion unswervingly behind this unstoppable campaign.
Best Community Event: Kilberry Scarecrow Festival
Back in early April this year, the remote and beautiful Kilberry peninsula staged a Scarecrow Festival
Kilberry is the great bulge of land facing westwards on to the Sound of Jura between Brenfield, south of Ardrishaig and Tarbert in Kintyre. It really is a world apart, hiding all sorts of secret delights as well as the drive around it [start at the Tarbert end - the Paps of Jura stay with you longer that way].
In the peninsula is Crear, the artists retreat, concert and wedding venue; and the foodies hideout of the Kilberry Inn.
in April the community worked together and peppered the entire peninsula with scarecrows of all sorts.
It was like a treasure trove. You drove the peninsula with your eyes on a constant swivel, looking for them, not sure what they might be like.
They made the landscape even more magical because they made it a tease and you laughed out loud at the variety.
A ghost of a sheet swung from a tree opposite the Kilberry Inn. A fat-thighed pig farmer with a red face sat on a wall further along. A cyclist taking a fast corner out of the estate looked utterly convioncing until the last minute. Two sileage bails in a field morphed into Posh and Becks. The Angel of Achahoish spread its wings to shelter the local primary school the community had saved from closure not so long ago. A mad gangling figure strode from the phone box. A Tatty Howker had died an awful death on a stake. A mountain biker soared into the air from a jump on a track, Eddie the Eagle was ready to hit the ramp to oblivion with his skis stuck through a fence by the water; and a predatory raven threatened all comers from a post outside a cottage.
It was a total blast.
This was fun, mystery, craft, community collaboration and very light-handed. The scarecrows were there for you to find and it was up to you to go looking if you wanted to. No one was watching – unless that cyclist leaving the estate…..
Best Contribution to Creative Life: Caol Ruadh
If ever there was play for adults it is to be found at the Scottish Sculpture Park at Caol Ruadh on the edge of Colintraive in the south west of the Cowal peninsula, near the ferry to the Isle of Bute.
In June this year, the 20 acre estate opened to the public in its new guise, in one of the big surprises of the year.
The grounds themselves, already shaped by the creative imagination of owner, Karen Scotland, are essentially playful, well kept but unmanicured, free somehow, open to exploration and offering a sense of adventure and the anticipation of the unexpected.
As a sculpture park – with small to medium sized pieces which could marry with gardens of all sizes – all of this intrinsic playfulness was accelerated to Mach 2. What was intriguing anyway became doubly so and the invitation to explore was heightened by the pleasure of unimaginable finds.
The sculptures – and the artists who created them, along with the curatorial eyes of Karen Scotland and her partner in this enterprise, Anne Edmonds – found natural and narrative roles everywhere. Some abstract shapes danced in the woodlands, entertaining themselves. Others, a family of steely monoliths, waited for you amongst the trees, defensively but clearly ready to offer resistance.
A female figure lay on the grass on one of the terraces, a leg in the air, as if reading a book in the sunshine – or dozing. A couple embraced on a rock pinnacle halfway up a cliff face.
An ear listened at the edge of the wood above the drop to the Kyles of Bute. A ship in full sail reached down a river of slate. A cluster of abandoned croft houses in miniature stood amongst the seaweed and stones on the shore, even more poignant in their relative scale and in their periodic seizure and escape from the tides.
Strangely alone figures, reflecting the surroundings in their polished steel, seemed to have changed their clothes every time you looked at them from a different place. They were guardian like – and yet searching for belonging.
You could write novels on the basis of the multiple suggestiveness of Caol Ruadh.
This is a commercial outdoor sculpture gallery. It is a place of business as well as play. It is free in every sense. It adds immeasurably to what Cowal and Argyll have to offer to residents and visitors alike – and to the life of the imagination without which all of us would be so much less. And it changes all the time.
Turkey of the Year: Inveraray Pier
A Christmas nominations list somehow cries out for the title of Turkey of the Year – and one candidate presents its full credentials for the role.
We featured the dangerously derelict state of Inveraray Pier at the end of August this year – and nothing has been done since by the owners to make it safe.
Argyll and Bute Council has applied for two separate grant awards of £1 million each for Inveraray.
One is to Historic Scotland’s Conservation Area Regeneration Scheme (CARS) – where the proposal for Inveraray is in competition with 24 other applicants for a total of £10 million in funding.
The other is to the Heritage Lottery Fund for funding under the Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI).
The council’s decision also to apply for THI funding was made after a survey for the application to Historic Scotland’s CARS fund showed a greater need for funding than had beed estimated.
Inveraray is a planned town designed by Robert Adam. It is, in many ways, exquisite – in its planning, its scale and appearance, its marriage of symmetry with variety and in its perfect location, bounded by the two lochs of Fyne and Shira and surrounded by wooded hillside with the bare spine of Beinn an Fidleir swimming away from it in the distance at the head of Loch Fyne.
The refurbishment of this magical town is important both locally and to Argyll.
This makes it all the more incomprehensible that its pier, so much a shaping feature of the town and one of the main places every visitor goes to look at, with many wandering along it – is safe, strong and good to look at. As it is, the structure has been neglected to the point where an accident is a matter of time.
We cannot see the logic in restoring the town while leaving a degraded and dangerous structure projecting into the bay.
The Scottish Government has recently set the precedent for permitting a hostile community buy out bid – for the Pairc Estate in Lewis, to be supported by the Community Land Fund.
Inveraray Pier obviously has to be taken into community ownership, by consent or by such a hostile bid.
A community that cares about its urban and waterside environment as much as Inveraray clearly does, has to be able to guarantee the structural integrity of so important a historic feature of its townscape – dating from the last quarter of the 18th century. Given the aesthetic of Inveraray, the community also has to be able to assure itself and its visitors of the visual competence of the pier.
We suggest consideration of an approach to the Community Land Fund to explore this situation. In its current state, the pier cannot be worth much. It cannot be left as it is, nor can it be fudged up into the appearance of a healthy structure, where it is not.
Note 1: For Argyll will present a set of end of year nominations on 31st December.
Note 2:The top photograph looks like a scene from a Hitchcock movie. It is one of the images taken by pupils at Lochgilphead High School at the Taynish National Nature Reserve in the Snapberry project and projected onto a gable wall in Colchester Square during the 2012 Lochgilphead Lantern Parade.
