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Tourism fears for Highland roads are decades old according to documents


By Mike Merritt

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WARNINGS that the Highlands’ roads were unsuitable for large-scale tourism were given to then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan more than 50 years before the advent of the North Coast 500 road trip.

Macmillan was told his plan to turn the Highlands into a tourist mecca to rival the Alps would be scuppered by the region’s “appalling” roads.

Newly released government documents reveal that the Conservative PM was determined to reverse the flagging fortunes of Scotland’s far north by rebranding it as a tourist destination.

Macmillan believed that the Highlands, whose grouse moors provided a playground for the upper classes, should become accessible to ordinary people.

However, John Maclay, the Scottish secretary at the time, argued that it did not have the infrastructure to cope with mass tourism and that significant investment in its road network would be required.

In a letter to Mr Maclay dated January 30, 1959, Macmillan wrote: “I do not believe that the great forests and grouse moors can last much longer. What we want to do is to popularise sport, making it widely available, and fill the country with simple but comfortable hotels for this class of people.

“We ought also to spread tourism in its more popular sense.”

However, Mr Maclay expressed his reservations, saying: “The congestion on the Highland roads, nearly all of them single track, in July and August is appalling and there is a real danger that tourists will decide never to return to some of the most beautiful parts of the Highlands because of the inconvenience and delays they have suffered.”

In September last year Holyrood’s tourism committee heard that the NC500’s booming popularity was placing excessive pressure on roads and parking, in addition to putting a strain on amenities such as public toilets.

A fifth of the route is on single-track road and there have been complaints of congestion, convoys of camper vans and bikers and both fast and slow drivers. The NC500 stresses that it has produced a safe driving guide.

Launched in 2015, the road trip covers 516 miles of the north Highlands – taking in Wester Ross, Sutherland, Caithness, Easter Ross, the Black Isle and Inverness.

It has been named as one of the top five coastal routes in the world by Travel Now magazine, and as one of the top 101 reasons to travel by National Geographic.


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