Campervan Control in the Argyll Islands

maureenandtom

maureenandtom

Full Member
Posts
1,248
Likes
1,962
This should probably be in the individual islands threads but it refers to more than one island and is possibly of wider interest.

Argyll News: Argyll islands lead the way in campervan control | For Argyll

I think this is very disquieting. You could drive off a ferry and be turned round and put back on it. This will lead to having to book your space on the island. Not necessarily a bad thing but a nail in the coffin of wild camping. Could it be legal? Effectively banning you from the road no matter how good the reasoning or provocation?
 
pfft, isolate the islands even more, great, i'll stick to the mainland then, i'm not prepared to pay the ferry fee to be turned away, what a stupid idea surely you should not be accepted on the ferry first, its madness, surely they cant get away with that
 
Methinks Calmac will be owing a lot of money to a lot of people if this scheme is not just scaremongering.

We have previously visited the islands and would love to go back one year, but not if we run the risk of being turned away after we buy our ferry ticket.

If the islands council don't want us allegedly damaging the machair and environment then give us the camp sites we have been asking for all these years, and keep the prices reasonable!!

These islanders keep going on about how poor they are, and how they rely on the tourists to make their money in the summer months, then they go and bite the hand that is giving them their income!!!!!

Or am I missing something here, is there some massive income generation opportunity coming that they don't want the world in general to know about and would rather keep secret??????
 
'jamming up singletrack roads'...? last time I was jammed on a singletrack road was when I was helping an artic get out of a ditch. Maybe I should have left it there and campaigned to have delivery trucks banned.
'the tendency to drive off and leave a pile of rubbish'...? this kind of comment really makes me want to give some smug git a right slapping. Well folks, have your independance then you can find out what it's like to have a huge country with no one living in it and pay for your own b****y roads from your own b****y taxes. Perhaps then you will discover how much you rely on tourism to allow you to sit on your smug a***s and whinge. :mad1:
 
To be fair, noone on WC has submitted any sites on Coll or Tiree. And that possibly because there aren't any. From what I remember of Tiree, its mostly fenced off, and places that are open to the road often have houses close by.
On the otherhand its also reasonable to believe that the report has been generated using one or two examples by idiots, and the usual case of us all being tarnished with the same label.
From personal experience with regard these smaller Isles, I've found it easier & ten times cheaper, to park in Oban (or nearby site) and just take our bikes over, first ferry out, last one back.
Same applies to Colonsay & Lismore.
 
We where thinking about the west coast of Scotland for our hols next year but I am not driving 500 miles to be ripped off. If this is their attitude, then the midges will just have to feast on the locals.

Richard
 
My first thoughts on reading this were of sympathy for the island residents but very quickly I separated that sympathy from what is proper.

People will know that one of the bees which buzzes most merrily in my bonnet is the one that has contempt and anger for councils taking powers they do not possess and making us believe that they do have these powers. Abusing our natural trust in the bodies we pay for.

Do these island councils have the power in law to prevent campervans using roads on the island simply because they are campervans? Can they legally do this? Can they prevent us using roads all taxpayers pay for? Would we accept Cornwall councils, for example, turning us back at the Tamar Bridge or Lancashire saying that campervans are not acceptable in the county unless you have booked a parking place? I'm not about to challenge the island councils but that isn't relevant; do they have the power?

The lawyers and politicians on here tell us that for local traffic rules a TRO has to be in force. Is this true in Scotland? Can a TRO discriminate against campervans just because they are campervans, ie, not on grounds of height or weight or length or width but just because they are campervans.

And what about this idea that Crofters would provide the parking places? We are told, on here, that under some Caravans Act which I haven't bothered to look up just now, the landowner (not the campervanner) commits an offence if he allows a campervan to overnight on his land. Do we have a local authority here encouraging the breaking of a law by its local residents and making traffic rules without a TRO? Can we see the TRO?

Or do these things only apply in England and not Scotland (and maybe not Wales and Northern Ireland too)?

This PROVOST PETRIE RECEIVES ARGYLL AND THE ISLES TOURISM LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD | Argyll and Bute Council implies that the tourist authorities in Argyll might not be totally blinkered and I've taken the article as an apportunity to write to the Argyll and Bute's tourist authorities with my little booklet about providing Aires.

I'll let you know of any response.
 
Under the Road Traffic Acts of 1984 and 2004, highways authorities have the ability to ban vehicles by weight, height, width or class. They also have the ability to ban vehicles on the basis of damage to a sensitive environment (something which has been brought to bear in this particular case). Finally, local councils also have the right to pass bye-laws banning overnight sleeping in any vehicle (although you could make out a case that if you are in no fit state to drive through tiredness they cannot move you on). Having said that, it has been pointed out many times before that many of the signs you see in car parks or by the roadside do not have the legal backing of TROs and cannot be enforced. The problem is that without a great deal of prior research you may not be able to tell which is which. But the short answer is - yes it can be legal to do what Argyll and Bute are doing but just because it can be doesn't necessarily mean it is.

A further interesting aspect to this particular case is that most of Coll and Tiree appears to be in the ownership of the Dukes of Argyll and so much of the land which is used for overnighting may be private property and the owner would have the right not to allow vehicles to stop.

Incidentally, the bit in the mewspaper report about motorhomes being turned back as they attempt to land on the islands appears not to be so - if you read the comments below the report and follow them up.
 
runnach said:
Bit of a harsh statement is it not, this has absolutely nothing to do with Scottish Independance and, if your at all familiar with our inner and outer Hebrides, you will have course noted, many islanders are non Scots. Same for many non Scots living on our mainland.

Sitting, and whinging is better than rioting eh!!
Click to expand...

Just because I'm currently living in the south, I have to pay around £2200 pa to help keep Scotland afloat. This is before I cross the border to bolster the local economy. Does this earn me any gratitude? I don't think so...

Of course there was no rioting in Scotland - all the wee neds were off their heids on Tennants and smack...
(other outrageous stereotypes may be available):D
 
runnach said:
2.2k is that right, should be more!!

Easy remedy to bolstering economy, stay your side of the border, why would you deserve gratitude?

Tennants is too dear for the neds and, unfortunately smack and the likes is a nationwide problem.

As for riots, a few did try it on via social net working sites, they were duly shopped by their friends, then severely dealt with by our justice system.

:wave:
Click to expand...

My side of the border??? Last I checked Edinburgh is south of the Kingdom :D
 
When was in scotland last year we went on a boat trip, it took us to Muck, Eigg and Rum, the islander games were ending and the boat we were on was picking up all the islanders and taking them home, we got chatting to them, they were so friendly, i told them we was in a MH and what do they think of the huge amounts they get coming in, 'bring it on',' get em all here' 'dont bother wi france, 'come to scotland' was just some of the comments, i have yet to meet a local who objects to the MH's, they even invited us to stay with them next time we were over, there was a little cafe on Muck, the crab sandwiches are to die for, £3.50 i asked the assistant how can they survive charging so little, she said the fisherman donated the crabs and she works in the shop voluntary, they need to keep the shop open for the tourists and charge so little to encourge people to come bac.

I know all that have visited Scotland will have a similar story of locals looking at innotave ways to keep us coming, the last thing they need is articles like this scaring people off, i have continued to read the article and it looks like the newsroom have made a bit of a B****x
 
Every one seems to be getting very excited about Colonsay and Tiree are thinking about doing. There is a parallel in all parts of the UK. It is all to do with scale. Think back to when you might get a traveller (aka Gypsy to most people, but that is not necessarily correct) set up at the side of the road on a bit of spare grass, move on in a couple of days, (they did not all leave a mess) there was no big problem. In fact I know some growers in the Vale of Evesham who welcomed them as a temporary workforce.

The problem arose when they started getting too many together and staying too long. The locals were getting upset, so took (sometimes direct) action to get rid of them. The travellers would then congregate in even bigger numbers for their own protection and so the thing escalated.

On an island space is finite, (particularly in places like Tiree where there is little spare capacity) if they want to limit the number of caravans motorhomes etc that they have on the island at any one point then they possibly can. But threatening to turn people round as they drive off the ferry is not one of the ways to do it. It will need controls and increased beaucracy but the ferry companies could be required to see a booking for a site on such small islands before selling you a ticket. It works on the North Sea, you cannot get on to a helicopter to a rig even at the invitation of the owner of the rig if you do not possess the relevant medical certificate, so systems do exist to enable control of the passage of people. They just need the right implementation. After all who wants to go to an island that is crammed with visitors anyway?

Nobody seems to have picked up on one sentence in the article. viz:
We have long advocated the adoption of a national policy where caravans, campervans and tourist coaches are proscribed from using single track roads.

To me this has much more danger in it than any arbitory number of vans on a particular island. When we go travelling in the MH, we seek out the single track roads, because often that is where the best scenery is. If this suggestion is adopted whole areas of the mainland, let alone the islands, will be lost not only to us, but coach tourists too. The problem that this sort of remark grows like a cancer and suddenly you'll find it everywhere. It could happen. Even some two track roads already have bylaw where caravans are banned. Sutton Bank in Yorkshire for example. yet Coaches and lorries are allowed. This is just the sort of suggestion that anti-caravan/MH types will pick up and run with. Now that is something to be worried about.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yes, I did think turning people away off a ferry was a bit extreme even with my jaundiced view of local authorities. However, I'm still certain that councils will do this sort of thing if we let them get away with it and we have to keep an eye on these people. Who guards the guardians - we do.

It is worth reading the responses. Some from motorhomers but also from local people. There is quite an encouraging acceptance of the need for tourist income and here is a couple of examples - very heartening.

" . . . and any other potential visitors reading this – PLEASE do not think that For Argyll speaks for anyone in the area, except themselves, and they are not in the tourism business.
Tourism IS our lifeblood, and there is a great deal more we should be doing to develop it and make more of our wonderful and myriad assets.
It is the one aspect of our economy that we know something about, and have an undeservedly good reputation for.
With a bit of application, support from all, and some understanding of what our customers REALLY want (like great service, quality facilities, and quality logistics), we could be really rather well off."



"Tourism is a vital cash earner for Scotland, and for Argyll and the Isles in particular and welcoming visitors of all types and modes of travels is something that is generally done well.

I have never heard before anything like For Argyll’s rather extreme suggestion to have a blanket ban for certain forms of transport on single-track roads. That is, I believe bizarre and unworkable – especially when you consider that people living on those single track roads could have caravans or motor homes themselves! . . .

. . .So, if anyone is thinking of visiting Argyll and the Isles in their motor-home or caravan or are planning to camp here, then you will be made very welcome indeed."

I'm an honorary Teuchtar, serving up there for very nearly a total of ten years. Our daughter was born in the West Highlands and the original article dismayed me. The response from residents is encouraging.
 
Info received today on ownership of Colonsay - Colonsay was purchased by the 1st Baron Strathcona and Mountroyal in 1906, together with Oronsay. Oronsay was sold in the early 1970s and has been owned for the last 30 years by Mrs Frances Colburn, widow of the late Ike Colburn, architect (Mass.). Oronsay is rented to RSPB who operate it as a bird sanctuary and farm.

In Colonsay, some crofters have exercised their right-to-buy, and there are a number of freehold house owners. The bulk of the island remains in the ownership of the Strathcona family (current laird is Hon. Alex Howard, eldest son; his father has retired). Colonsay Estate farm most of the land themselves, but there is one remaining traditional tenanted farm, Machrins. David Hobhouse owns Balnahard and has a long-standing tenancy or partnership arrangement, going back to the 1930s.

Surley only the 1st Baron Strathcona and Mountroy can make rules on over-nighting OR do the council maintain the road and lay byes etc.:blah:
 
Well done GD. I know we can always rely on you for accurate info on the islands.

Ta.:cheers:

Tony.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:0)

Back
Top