Another ugly bulldozed track has appeared in the Highlands and there seems little can be done to halt it. Dave Hewitt says it is time to speak up against such developments.
Further Lakeland musings have been put on hold. Something, as they say, has come up. Mike Dales - access and conservation officer at the Mountaineering Council of Scotland - reports that the Attadale estate is bulldozing a new track from Bendronaig Lodge (Landranger 25, grid square 0139) north through the Loch an Laoigh pass towards Bidein a'Choire Sheasgaich (25/0241). Dales has recently spoken with Simon Fraser, the local Highland Council planner - based, rather incongruously, on Skye - and it seems that work on the track has already started.
Fraser visited the site last week (and it's a measure of the track's inappropriateness that one of the country's most remote areas can be labelled a "site"), although he was primarily there to look at the earlier and equally controversial, Pait Lodge track. This was mentioned here last year and is another example of Attadale's handiwork, heading eastward from Bendronaig Lodge and obliterating the old stalking-path route to Loch Monar. While Fraser was inspecting this, the Attadale factor and stalker showed him their plan for the new northern track.
Remarkable though it might seem to anyone who has ever received a knockback from their local planning department for an extension or a garage, it looks unlikely that any council or legal procedures can be invoked to prevent the Bendronaig track being ploughed through the hills (even though it will be visible for miles and will greatly impinge on scenic quality and on walking-related tourism). Fraser - who is away on holiday until late July - is reportedly of the opinion that because the newbuild follows the line of an existing track, it therefore falls into the category of "permitted development".
An alternative school of thought says that the change in type of the route is an important factor - the estate is effectively upgrading the old stalking path to a vehicular track and changing its use - and so it shouldn't be allowed to go through on the nod as some kind of agricultural or land-management necessity. Certainly any changes made for "sporting" purposes are not a shoo-in - there are legal constraints on that type of thing - and the 32,000-acre shooting estate would have a hard job convincing anyone that some wealthy (and lazy) stalking clients won't soon be paying to bounce along both this and the Pait track in their 4x4s before too long.
Trouble is, no matter what the eventual decision on the legality or otherwise of the track, we're shortly going to be faced with a fait accompli. As with the Pait episode, the estate is digging first and answering questions afterwards. Dales has heard from an MCofS member who was in the Bendronaig area last weekend. Around 200 metres of track have already been dug, he reported, and "it looks hellish".
As anyone who has been there will know, the huge hinterland between the Kintail and Carron hills is one of Scotland's emptiest - and best - areas. While no Scottish hills and glens can genuinely said to be "untouched", these are as close as it comes to that kind of definition. There might not be the massive rock peaks found just to the north in Torridon but the whole area is full of chunky ridges and twisted straths and carries a very definite sense of space and loneliness. It's this sense - this mood - that is undermined every time a track is ploughed along the side of a glen.
The west-of-Monar area has been badly treated in many ways over the years - it was cleared of its human population years ago and another wave of changes came with the arrival of the big hydro lochs in the middle part of the last century. Now it looks as though it's being meddled with again, as the Pait track and now this one, while bad enough in themselves, imply a systematic attempt to bulldoze into oblivion one of the last-remaining high-quality path networks. I'm not a fan of everything done by the much-praised Letterewe estate but Attadale ought to take a look at the wonderfully maintained stalking paths further north. Perhaps then they would learn a thing or 20 about how to balance estate and public use of traditional through-routes. Perhaps, though, they just can't be bothered.
It's the lack of consultation - and the arrogance of Attadale - that will anger many people most. We all have an investment in landscapes such as this and we should all - via the normal democratic processes - have a chance to comment on and object to any wholesale changes. For all that the hydro-isation of the eastern glens wasn't to many people's tastes, at least there was a chance to comment and complain. And the end product there - the generation of electrical power for the national grid - at least could be seen to serve the common good. Not so now with these new tracks - they're being put in as a private indulgence, with zero consultation and for the greed of the few rather than the good of the many.
It's crazy that changes to the road/track situation in this and in other areas don't have to go through the most strict of procedures and most wide-ranging of discussions before anything is done on the ground. It's absurd - and democratically offensive - that a few people in the landowning community can trash a landscape for their own ends without any care or consultation just because it is in the back of beyond. And it's a sad indictment of the wider media that while papers can devote endless column inches to, say, inconsequential speculation about the future career of a Central Belt politician, behind-our-backs land trashing is allowed to go unreported.
Chances are, as I'm writing this, the diggers are again in action; it's likely that when Simon Fraser comes back from his break the thing will be there in all its dubious glory. Short of lying down in front of the bulldozers there's no obvious way to try and stop it - or even to put it on hold. Contacting the relevant bit of Highland Council is an obvious route but the council seems powerless. For what it's worth, Simon Fraser's details are: Area Planning and Building Control Manager, Highland Council, King's House, The Green, Portree, Isle of Skye IV51 9BS; 01478 612 412; skye.planning@highland.gov.uk
Another route would be to let Attadale estate know the strength of feeling directly. The estate is big on PR and self-promotion and has a website at www.attadale.com This goes on plenty about wildlife and hills and history but is strangely quiet on the dodgier aspects of the business. The estate is keen to control and corridorise walkers under the guise of pseudo-positive statements about those access routes with which the estate has no problem (and for the umpteenth time, how many of these estates need to be told that while they might own the land, they don't own the access?) But here we have a case of an estate seriously degrading - as opposed to upgrading - a large piece of land and they ought to at least hear a few of the more sceptical voices.
In amongst all the stuff about how wonderful they are and what a great job they're doing, the Attadale site speaks of the need to "minimise disturbance to the deer" - a policy which sits somewhat awkwardly with the presence of JCBs in remote deer-filled glens. The site also - predictably - gushes about how "the views from the summit [of Beinn Dronaig] are magnificent". Er, not quite so magnificent as they were a couple of weeks ago, given the Attadale attitude to land management.
So how about sending a few well-chosen thoughts Attadale's way, just so they know they're being watched? Their site has an email address: info@attadale.com It is time they were encouraged to tune into the groundswell.
Dave Hewitt
11/7/2002
Postcript (Friday 12 July)
Was phoned late on Thursday evening by Mike Dales of the MCofS, who was descending to Loch Carron after a long walk in to visit the site of the new track. The word he used to describe it was "hellish", and he added that "No way in the world is that a permitted development." The track has already been pushed on to around 500 metres in length, the old path of around 30-45cm width having been replaced by a rough scar of nearly three metres width. He met no one apart from an overnight walker but reports that a digger and a dumper are parked just east of Bendronaig Lodge, ready for the next day's work.
Dave can be contacted at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
