Drumochter diner diva Liz now wears ‘ice’ on her finger!
When you’ve taken on the world and won you celebrate big - and a year on, as you mark the first anniversary of the start of the battle, you celebrate even bigger, by naming the day!
As we reported in December, history was made when Hamish Cullerton and Liz Leslie finally won the right to set themselves up permanently as the A9’s first full-time roadside eatery.
The couple made history smack bang in the desolate wilderness of the Drumochter Pass. Thanks to their perseverance, the dreaded snow trap was finally allowed to offer brave travellers the highest of Highland cuisine.
“It’s fantastic being the first to get formal accreditation to trade beside this amazing road,” said Hamish, after months of having to go through bureaucratic hoops.
The couple had to battle with a policy which was agreed by the Scottish Development Department when the A9 route was first identified that no service areas were to be built on the new trunk road, to protect business in the bypassed communities.
“We’re here now officially, every Monday to Friday, and we love meeting the world - literally!” celebrated Hamish. It’s not about making money, it’s about meeting people from every corner of the globe. This place is amazing.”
A year on from the start of the battle, the couple are celebrating by announcing their next landmark.
“I’m making an honest woman of Liz!” Hamish told the Strathy. “We’re going to marry at Inverness Register Office on the 23rd!”
With his 57-year-old fiance there all the way, Hamish (66) spent six months proving to all the relevant authorities - he lost count of them - that all he wanted to do was see people safely through the trunk road networks’ highest and toughest mountain pass at 460 metres (1508 feet) above sea level.
A former plant driver himself, Hamish knows what lorry drivers are needing to sustain themselves.
“I had years on the road before actually running a shop at North Kessock,” he recalled.
“So as I told the Highland Council departments, BEAR Scotland and Transport Scotland, I’m very well qualified to take on the challenge. Liz loves it as much as I do.”
When not working at their hard-won catering unit in Badenoch, Hamish and Liz chill out on their fully sea-worthy Dutch cruiser, moored at Seaport Marina in Inverness, where they reflect happily on their long and successful battle with bureaucracy.
The 110 mile section from Perth to Inverness is the most well known part of the route being the main link to the Highlands from the Central Belt. Prior to any work taking place, the old road passed through numerous towns and villages, resulting in major congestion.
Long convoys were common and there were few opportunities for overtaking. Winter resilience on the road was poor with parts of the road at Drumochter closed for days at a time due to snowfall.
The route was identified in the 1970 white paper for Scotland's roads as one requiring major improvement. Initial plans had been to provide bypasses and only limited investment, but concern was raised by some local communities that business might die out due to the removal of through traffic.
But the policy to protect bypassed communities was quietly dropped by the Scottish Government around a decade ago in new national planning policy blueprints.