Loch Faskally
There
was an incident at Loch Faskally in October when the owner of
the teashop and boating station at Pitlochry objected to an SCA
party launching from there (even though it was closed). The party
included several MSPs who were being introduced to paddling to
highlight access problems - this gave them some first hand experience
of the sort of problems encountered, and at least one said that
he had previously been unaware that this sort of thing happened!
Hopefully this will make them sympathetic to legislation to improve
access. The boating station owner implied that Hydroelectric objected
to paddling on the loch. The SCA wrote to Scottish and Southern
Energy and established that they do
not have policy of disallowing paddlers on the loch. However they
did also express some sympathy for the teashop proprietor.
After
this initial letter, a few people e-mailed Scottish and Southern
about this and they have stated
that there is no problem with responsible canoeists' access to
the Loch for paddling.
In
their view there seem to be two different reasons for paddlers
accessing the loch, however, which may result in different approaches:
1.
Egress after running the Tummel:
Responsible paddlers using the picnic site at the power station
as egress after running the Tummel are perfectly OK to continue
doing so. If you are putting in by the dam, please take care not
to damage fences etc if passing boats over them.
2.
Placid water paddling on the loch (especially large groups).
If large groups are paddling on the loch, it would be helpful
if they could consider showing preference for access and parking
from the boating station, and paddling in the bay in front of
the boating station, as this is an area that is not preferred
for salmon fishing. Scottish and Southern also added that contacting
owner of the boating station would keep things sweet as far as
parking is concerned, but that there is no problem from Hydro's
perpective, for responsible access for paddling on the loch -
they suggest that flat water paddlers may prefer to paddle from
the slipway by the Fisheries Laboratory across the Loch from the
Tummel get out as this gives them access to a large bay of shallow
water which is not used by anglers. This seems to at odds with
what they said in their letter to the SCA office. Possibly they
have had a re-think if several people have contacted them about
this. It also seems to be very much at odds with the behaviour
of the owner of the boat station when the MSPs were present when
he seems very unwilling to "keep things sweet". However,
the boating station will be under new management in the spring,
so maybe the new proprietor will have a more relaxed attitude
to paddling.
Contributed
by SCA
I McKendry Ancrum CC
J Moxley
Last updated 16/5/02
