January 18, 2024
By Peter Page
The weather was extraordinary on Ben Lomond on 7th January – blue sky and sunshine, with dry, crisp snow on the ground and fog in the valleys.
As a result it was very busy, I have never seen so many people enjoying the hill at the same time – I guess that I saw / passed at least 200 people in 4 hours of walking.
So, at the so-called welcome / visitor centre, I find the loos [owned by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)] closed for the season.
The whole building was locked like Fort Knox and the first thing I met on the way round to the footpath was someone having a pee up against the wall of the building.
It was kind of someone to welcome us back but really they are trying to tell us that they no long have rubbish bins on site:
According to another sign it is supposedly good for nature and wildlife not to collect rubbish:
But the consequence is abandoned Costa coffee cups…
Macdonald’s bags, food packaging and the rest….
So, on the busiest day I have seen at Ben Lomond, the loos and the rubbish collection are not available, presumably due to financial constraints. However, the public sector partners, the LLTNPA and Forest and Land Scotland, seem incapable of collecting the money that their budget planned for:
At least £500 foregone on one day based on the 100+ cars in the car park…and the non-functioning of the meter is clearly not a temporary blip….
If the reason for the bad visitor experience is financial, then why were there 33, thirty three, LLTNPA branded vehicles parked, unused, in the Carrochan House and Duncan Mills slipway car parks on the Saturday afternoon?
Part of this is mismanagement by Forest and Land Scotland and part by the LLTNPA but it is all about a failure to make best use of public money.
[Note from Nick Kempe, Parkswatch editor: Peter Page, a resident in the National Park, sent this to parkswatch last week while I was away. It shows that nothing has improved at Ben Lomond, one of Scotland’s most iconic mountains, or the road end at Rowardennan since I wrote about it two years ago (see here). While the failure to provide bins presumably helps ensure the small team the LLTNPA now employ to pick up litter are kept busy, the closed toilets and a major public health and equalities issue, as explained in the Guardian this week (see here).]
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