YOUR VIEWS: Highlands needs to move with the times and welcome motorhomes

You report caravan and mobile home site owners are opposed to Highland Council allowing overnight stays in its car parks as a way of raising revenue and addressing so called 'wild camping'.

Firstly the fire rules are based on mobile homes which cannot be moved.

In Europe, motorhomes park together and have done for many years - just the same as cars do.

Secondly many caravan sites do not allow single nights which NC500 travellers are looking for and are closed over the winter when motorhomers still travel.

Also their sites duplicate the facilities motorhomes already have namely showers and toilets.

Instead of clutching their pearls about waste disposal why don't they offer this service?

Many campsites abroad have motorhome parking at their front gates to cater for people who don't want to sit behind a windbreaker for two weeks in July.

The growing popularity of #vanlife means campsites across the whole of the Highlands need to adapt as people's holiday aspirations have moved on since the 1960s.

Donald MacDonald

Glasgow.

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Don’t be coy with bloodsports label

Re the latest Fergus Ewing column headlined ‘Wasted capercallie money could have been used to help salmon thrive’.

Keepers indeed know all about wildlife - that is how to destroy it.

Instead of the coy description of country sports - fell running or climbing perhaps? - just be honest Fergus and call it hunting, or killing things for fun. Bloodsports need to join other rural traditions like badger baiting in the dustbin of history.

James Marshall

Dornie.

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Priorities wrong at new housing site

Why are Tulloch Homes being allowed to go ahead with their 80 private houses at Perth Road, Newtonmore, without first building the 20 affordable houses that have been promised?

It is very disappointing indeed for the young couples and families of the village who are very unlikely to be able to afford the prices being charged for the mid range private houses.

The Springfield development at Blairgowrie (part of Tulloch) is selling these same house types cheaper - £204k to £320k in Blairgowrie versus £235k to £425k in Newtonmore - a sure sign of Cairngorm National Park having an ongoing negative effect on housing prices for local people.)

Would be good to get details of when the council/affordable housing is to start here and for an honest and public explanation to be given to the Newtonmore community about the likely timing and the reasons for the delay .

Whilst writing, can we be assured that none of the houses within the ‘Spey Green’ development will be given short term let planning permission either now or in the future.

Yvonne Richmond

Newtonmore.

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You can ‘remake’ major difference

The Grantown Remakery is very much a partner project. We partner many other organisations and community projects as well as the Department for Work and Pensions, our local GP practice and the local Veterans’ Foundation.

We would like to invite more local people, to spend a little time with The Remakery - on a voluntary basis.

Tomas Jedlicka - our amazing workshop supervisor - is increasingly becoming called upon to do more and more repairs for customers, and so needs most of his time for that. However we also have Trainees ( pupils from Grantown Grammar School as well as adults with mild learning difficulty, or mild mental health challenges ! )

With Tomas becoming increasingly busy with the repairs, he is sometimes stretched, trying to oversee what the trainees are doing while keeping up with his own busy work schedule.

This - we believe - is where you could come in. For a few hours in a morning or an afternoon, on the days when we are open, ( Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday ) you would support Tomas in the Workshop - keeping an eye on the trainees or assisting with repairs.

This will undoubtedly give you an opportunity to use your skills and experience to help others. If this appeals to you, please get in touch, when we can sit down over a coffee, and chat through some ideas.

Hope to have a blether soon.

Pete Carson

Project Manager

The Grantown Remakery

44 High Street

Grantown.

01479 873612

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Funds would be better spent on better public transport links than Cairngorm Mountain

I had a tentative plan to walk from Kingussie up the Feshie, camp under dark clear skies,get to Braemar and take buses on to Arbroath and visit my sister.

Surely from Braemar I could get over the Devil's Elbow, down to Blairgowrie, (just outside the national park, 34 miles from Braemar), and so to Dundee. No service!

The only option for me would be by Aberdeen and the best time possible is five or six hours but maybe 10 hours more likely.

As an alternative perhaps I could just decide to head for home.

From Braemar I might journey over the Lecht and by Tomintoul and Grantown make a semi circuit by bus of the park and get to Kingussie. Google Maps, she says says 'no way!'.

Maybe of more relevance to Badenoch and Strathspey was the letter a few weeks back from John Kirk of the Cairngorms National Park Authority board on the difficulty of getting by bus the short hop from Newtonmore to Nethy Bridge.

Is there an actual plan at any political level for better park public transport?

Might it be imagined that our wealthy estate owners could be persuaded to benefit themselves and us, by sponsoring colourful,jaunty national park buses perhaps with jolly slogans like maybe,from Wildlands- 'ASOS-fashioning fairer connections' or from the King's Balmoral 'A right royal round of the Cairngorms' or from our various oil interests 'Powering the wheels of progress'.

Better phrases are surely available!And anyway we're highly unlikely to see a rush to benefit the public realm.

There's not really much of a precedent.

Maybe it's just we really are too poor.

Still, perhaps if local Highland councillors saw fit to support putting public funding into connecting communities rather than propping up Cairngorm Mountain we might see some movement, some greening of our transport options.

Dick Webster

Kingussie.

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Fed-up with preaching on climate emergency

Last week it was reported that a volcano in south-western Iceland has erupted for the sixth time since December and that 30 people have died as floods hit India and Bangladesh.

Worldwide there are volcanic eruptions, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, monsoons and tsunamis.

Floods have been a significant issue in India and Bangladesh for centuries especially in low-lying Bangladesh. Repairing the infrastructure creates greenhouse gases.

Please Mother Nature stop these disasters since they are adding trillions of tons of ‘nasty’ CO2 to the 0.04 per cent ‘good’ CO2 already in the atmosphere.

People are fed up having to drive expensive electric cars, fit heat pumps, eat less meat, forsake flying, cycle to work, buy expensive wind electricity and be preached to by politicians and the climate apostles especially when the major emitting countries in the world are ignoring their Net Zero promises.

Clark Cross

Linlithgow.

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Pay and dismay for the local business owners

Re the Strathy online article ‘Overwhelming opposition to car parking charges planned at Cairngorms' most popular beauty spot’.

What a disgrace.

Towns, villages and businesses are struggling enough without this nonsense.

Just look at Elgin.

Gordon Lea Jones

Elgin.

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