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Euan McColm: Fairy Pools deserve more than a broken road and empty promises

Unless politicians pay attention quickly - and find the money needed for road repairs - this great jewel in the Highland Crown will lose its lustre, completely.

Fairy pools, Isle of Skye.
The Fairy Pools on Isle of Skye. Photo: Getty Images/iStock

For me, the list includes the beach at Tayinloan at sunrise, a cobbled lane in the French city of Avignon on a warm afternoon, and the Italian volcano Stromboli erupting in the dead of night.

In the highlights tape of my life so far, the memories of visiting these places remain vivid.

If I close my eyes, I can see that beautiful Argyllshire shoreline almost half a century after I last visited, I can hear the sound of two men – on guitar and oboe – playing jazz on the roof of a cafe in Provence, and I can taste the ash that drifted across the Med as lava slipped slowly down towards the water.

I have few holiday snaps (I always end up looking like myself in those so it’s best not to bother) but the images in my mind of special moments are as sharp as any carefully taken photograph.

You’ll have your own list, I hope, of images that remain indelible, memories of visiting places so surprising to us that we feel as we discovered them ourselves.

Scotland’s beauty marred by poor infrastructure

Scotland is full of locations where travellers might collect such memories. I might not be one for exceptionalism but even I become misty-eyed when discussing the beauty of our landscape.

Of course, this being Scotland, we don’t make it easy for tourists to enjoy themselves.

Sign for The Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye.
The Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye. Image: Jason Hedges/DC Thomson.

In no other European country will you find such pitiful public transport provision or such badly maintained major roads. We urge visitors to come and then, when they do, we let them work it out for themselves and safety and comfort be damned.

If they’re lucky, tourists will find their way to the Fairy Pools on Skye, one of our most famous beauty spots. The string of pools and falls running through Glen Brittle is, on a bright clear day, quite breathtaking to see.

Road to Fairy Pools in a pitiful state

But, as Press and Journal readers will know, tourists have begun to complain vociferously about getting to the pools. In a matter of months, reviews of the spot on website TripAdvisor have gone from five-star ratings to the recommendation that it’s simply not worth the bother of trying to visit.

Who can blame those unhappy visitors for their negativity? The single-track road to the Fairy Pools is in a pitiful state, pot-holed and broken, and those lucky enough to make it to the end without a puncture then face a wait of up to five hours to get into the car park.

Queues of traffic at the Fairy Pools.
Traffic chaos at the Fairy Pools on Skye. Image: supplied.

At Holyrood and Westminster, Scottish politicians make much of our country’s natural beauty. Slick TV commercials – with no cliche, from bagpipers to heilan’ coos, avoided – are screened around the world in the hope of bringing tourists and their cash to our little part of the world.

Highland Council must act

So what are these politicians, these great champions of Scotland and its beauty, doing about the Fairy Pools? Not much.

The Scottish Independent Tour Operator Association (Sitoa), quite rightly, says the problem now needs to be “addressed on a national stage” and Highland Council has been urged to act.

Sitoa chairman, Sandy Bloomer, cuts to the chase when he says the problems at The Fairy Pools have been created by a lack of investment in infrastructure.

Fairy Pools, Skye.
About 200,000 people visit the Isle of Skye beauty spot every year. Image: iStock

The council’s response is laughable. A statement informing us that “council officers are working on potential visitor management solutions and exploring funding streams to help alleviate some of these pressures” is the worst management-speak. The suggestion by councillor John Finlayson, chair of the Isle of Skye committee, that the Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland – which runs the parking and toilet facilities built at the site six years ago – should contribute to road repairs is simply ludicrous.

Whether Oats is – as Finlayson claims – making a fortune out of the car park or not is irrelevant. All the councillor’s remarks do is confirm to us that the local authority, in failing to build a car park itself, has neglected the Fairy Pools.

Skye community deserves better

It is, of course, not only tourists who are being failed, here. Locals on Skye – including those still struggling to rebuild hospitality businesses after the global coronavirus pandemic – deserve much, much better.

Over recent years, power and decision making has been increasingly centralised in Edinburgh. What’s more, I’d be surprised if many of the current crop of careerist MSPs had even heard of the Fairy Pools.

Unless those politicians pay attention quickly – and find the money needed for road repairs – this great jewel in the Highland Crown will lose its lustre, completely.


Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers

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