Easter Weekend on the Caledonian Canal

Well the weather is set to be fine for the Easter week holiday. Time flies and winter looks to be well and truly behind us now. We are planning to have a walk along the Caledonian Canal probably from Fort Augustus and while we are at Fort Augustus will have a short riverside walk to look for Kingfishers. We have seen them here before but only once as are not common around here I think we are on their northernmost boundary.  

The main thing is to get out there and enjoy the mild spring weather and have a nice Easter break everyone.      

Lambs asleep in Dores!

Last weekend we had a 'Highland Heatwave' with gorgeous high temperatures and sunshine galore. The rest of the week has been changeable with welcoming short showers to cool down the warm spring weather which allowed for plenty of work tidying up the garden. The birds, bees and red admiral butterflies appeared and the wild primroses were on show sprouting up on the woodland carpet and along the roadside verges.

In the fields near the village of Dores the lambs are enjoying their first days in the world especially in the warm sunshine although life can be rather tiring at times!

Litter louts! at Loch Ness

The south Loch Ness Tourist Group and many of the South Loch Ness comunity turned out last Sunday to do a 10 mile litter pick up along the lochside. it was a great day for it too.

Now today we went for a lunchtime walk into the Farigaig pass (beautiful)  and passed a Turner-Hire truck with a trailer full of lawn mowers on the back parked in the layby in Inverfarigaig. The guys inside were having their lunch and what a lovely spot to choose. 

You probably guessed by now the jist of this post! When we walked back  passed where they were having lunch they had gone but had left their lunch rubbish, milk bottles as well chucked all over the floor.  

So Mr www.Turner-hire.co.uk  if you know who these guys are I hope you would black list them as customers or at the very least give them a lecture about their loutish behaviour, its so easy to just take your litter homeand put it in rubbish bin or better stil the bottles in recycle bins. On SouthLoch Ness side your trucks will from now on be closely monitored!!    

Businesses dont sell yourself short

There are to many really nice high quality cottages, B&B's and even hotels who sell themselves short when it comes to showing their product on the web and in printed media.

I am regularly dismayed at some of the low quality images I am given by tourism businesses for displaying their rooms or cottages on the web. The old saying, "a picture paints a thousand words" is never truer than in tourism. Anyone thinking of putting a picture on a website or advertisement should always try to see the picture as a potential customer and ask themself, "would this picture make me book into this place or buy this product"  i think in very many cases the answer would be NO.

Even amateur photographers these days ought to be able to get reasonable pictures with a modern digital camera, but to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on property and high quality furnishings, then let yourself down with rubbish pictures is just economic suicide.

Take my advice, if you want to improve conversion rates for your accommodation then hire a professional photographer. He won't make a silk purse from a sows ear but sure a hell he won't make a pigs ear out of a silk purse either. 

Look at this self catering property owned by a professional photographer - The Boys Dormitory  to see exactly what i mean.

Author Andy www.tourism-site-fix.co.uk

South Loch Ness Litter Free!

We had a great day today doing the annual litter pick up along Loch Ness shore from Dores to Foyers ending up with drinks and lovely buffet at the Waterfall cafe at Foyers. Not so much rubbish this year mostly plastic bottles thrown down by the marathon runners on October. They dont mean to leave them of course people go behind them clearing up but obviously they are not as thorough as the local community. Just a word for any marathon runners, please drop your plastic rubbish in the gutter, not in ditches and banks along the road becauss your clean up guys dont seem to step off the tarmac surface to pick up yout rubbish!.. We the south Loch Ness Tourist Group and members of the local community have been doing the litter pick for a number of years now and when we first started doing it there were tyres, fridges carpets, matresses, you name it we found it!! nowadays its a pleasure to do it especially on a glorious day like today.
Thanks fo revery one who turned out today it just gets better every year. It would be nice if we could expand our range in future years to take in more of our scenic places of which we have many.

Red squirrels come to feed.

It was so good to see the red squirrels feeding away at the peanut feeders outside the window. We always worry that they will not make it through the harsh winters but they somehow survive and thrive.