A View from the Office - Foot and Mouth |
The messages are:-
Let other paddlers know what you have done and where, so we can build up a picture of what is OK and what isn't. Use the Highland Hostels website to do this www.highland-hostels.co.uk. There have been a few calls and suggestions that the SCA (who?) co-ordinates a process of finding out what is open or restricted and negotiating access to rivers. I am afraid the answer from a part time Access Officer is a comprehensive NO. Where the landowners are public interest bodies e.g. SNH, John Muir Trust, Local Authorities, National Trust for Scotland and RSPB it has been relatively straightforward to find out what land is open or not - one phone number, one website. But do you have any idea how many individual landowners out there own riparian stretches of river - there must be 15 at least on the Tay alone and some of those are timeshare? Due to the time consuming nature of this task, balanced against the need to provide as much information as possible, Tina Cuthbertson (of Snowgoose Centre) and I decided that the best way forward was to gather information and publicise it on the Highland Hostels website. It is totally reliant on folk posting info to the site directly - please do so to enquiries@highland-hostels.co.uk. The website is an attempt to collate and centralise information about paddling in Scotland during Foot and Mouth - use it to give information as well as get it! It is NOT an endorsement by the SCA (or Highland Hostels) giving paddlers permission to paddle rivers - we recognise that it is up to the individual landowners to decide how they manage access during this time. We might not like it, it might be confusing and we might suspect that some are restricting access for reasons other than Foot and Mouth but that' s the way it is for the time being. As to whether the information should be hosted on the SCA website - yes, in an ideal world it should be, but we don't have the resources to maintain the high level of postings we expect - Highland Hostels do. If you want to volunteer to manage it for a few weeks by all means do so. We have to assume that where we are not being asked to stay off the water for reasons of FMD disease, that access is as normal north of the Forth Clyde - subject to the observation of the Comeback Code. If a landowner tackles you for being irresponsible but there is no sign up asking you not to take access, politely state that you have complied with the Comeback Code. As John Picken says "Responsible access is a right and has its attendant duty" and that duty is all the more important in the current climate. I would urge people to take responsibility for their own paddling decisions and get out there to see what is free to paddle or not, and PASS THAT INFO ON! After all you often go to the Highlands to paddle rivers without knowing what the water levels are like and they dictate our paddling on loads of occasions - sometimes it's a goer and sometimes its not! Please don't rely on one half time person in an office in Edinburgh to be able to pull together a comprehensive picture of what's on - nor on harassed river advisers whose phones have been red hot, and who themselves often don't know the score! Quite a few folk are posting up info on sites on the e-groups - while this is helpful to the egroup members, please copy it to the Highland Hostels website so it can be accessed more widely. AND LASTLY FOOT AND MOUTH WILL BE GONE BY THE END OF THE YEARACCESS LEGISLATION WILL BE WITH US FOR THE REST OF OUR PADDLING LIVES.TAKE AN INTEREST. THERE IS STUFF ON THE WEBSITE AND STUFF COMING OUT IN SCOTTISH PADDLER IN A WEEK'S TIME. I HAVE POSTED UP AN EXAMPLE LETTER - AND THERE WAS ANOTHER UP A WEEK OR SO AGO. DON'T LET A NARROW FOCUS ON THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE BLIND YOU TO THE LONG TERM. |
