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'June Doom' Road Lock in Highland Perthshire

See also: Event Organiser's Response to June Anxieties

ON 24 JUNE this year, if a London company which organises cycle marathon events gets its way, many of Highland Perthshire’s roads will be closed for between 4 and 6 hours. Residents, trippers, tourists, guests, visitors, farmers, travellers, businesses and church worshippers will be barred from road use during the period.
Fears that the entire population of Rannoch, and all residents between Fearnan and Logierait will be unable to drive anywhere that day or be accessed by road, have been firmly refuted by the event organisers. Residents in Glen Lyon will have to take a very long detour via Lawers, Killin, and the south-side of Loch Tay to shop or to use services in Kenmore or Aberfeldy.
Closing roads in a city for 4 or 5 hours is okay because there are always ways round - but this is not the case in Highland Perthshire.

P&K Role
To make matters worse, this looks set to occur with virtually no public consultation. The Quintus Group, the parent company of the London Triathlon, the world’s largest triathlon event, and Challenger World, the largest corporate team building events, is behind the Etape Caledonia Cycling Event. the event is scheduled to start and finish in Pitlochry. Quintus Group is already taking payments from would-be participants (£50 a time for the long race).

• Has Perth and Kinross Council not been competently appraised of the impact of this event ?  One official questioned on the matter spoke of ‘minor inconvenience’ being caused to residents and businesses. In fact, it will clearly create significant disruption for most of Highland Perthshire, along with potentially serious safety issues.

• Or has P&K, through its armslength outfit Perth & Kinross Leisure, actively and high handedly courted the staging of this event - without any local consultation whatsoever?

Highland Perthshire is promoted by P&K and visitscotland as a venue for these ‘prestige’ events where cash benefit is blindly assumed to trickle down to the local economy from high street businesses to grateful country dwellers selling eggs at farm gates etc. Meanwhile, in this ‘major playground for these one day events’ the local authority is closing public lavatories and downsizing street cleaning services.

Local Plough Back

If the London company gets the 2,500 competitors it targets for 2007, it will score at least £100,000 from entrance fees alone. How much of that will go into the local community to offset the disruption caused, or be ploughed back into local infrastructural improvements? Will local farmers and businesses be given any compensation for their inconvenience and lost business?
The ambition appears to be for the event to become annual and grow year on year!
As it stands there is conflicting information available. The local authority indicates that the organisers have yet to submit their application for road closures, after which P&K plans to organise a public meeting in Aberfeldy. But the schedule for all this is already very tight, and this event may be forced upon us whether we like it or not as the timescale is too fast.
On the other hand the organisers indicate that they have been granted all the necessary permissions by P&K Roads Department Supremo, Jim Irons. Hariet Marlow, the London-based operations manager for th event said it was a done deal.

She told Comment: "We are sorry if people feel there has not been enough consultation but Perth and Kinross Council has given us the go-ahead, and demanded a very large sum of money for allowing the roads to be closed. That is why the ticket price is so high. Shortly we will be contacting all residents and businesses along the route to inform them of what will be happening. We hope they will be supportive as this is intended to help promote the area, and give people taking part a great experience."

Another Etape Caledonia Cycling Event spokesman contacted Comment to make clear that emergency vehicles would be permitted along the route if access were needed.

Past Experience

Having sold to the race organisers exclusive use of our roads behind the backs of all the communities affected, the web promotion for the event is now in full swing - see http://www.etapecaledonia.co.uk/ This has all happened before – the Kenmore to Aberfeldy Raft Race over 17 years closed only a fraction of the road system proposed for this cycle event, but the policing and mangement costs escalated to such an extent the organisers disbanded it.

National Orienteering and ‘The Path’ event in Glen Lyon have been held promising great local business payload only to culminate in publicity and profit for the promoters but locally just considerable stress and little or no revenue benefit.
Andrew Pointer runs Transcotland Holidays in Aberfeldy and the success of his livelihood depends upon being able to get from village to village each day to meet his clients and to deliver their luggage. A keen cyclist himself, he would normally support such an event coming to Perthshire.
However, he pointed out to Comment: “My problem is that there has been little or no public consultation, and the timescale is too fast. The event organisers should have given at least a year’s notice of their intention to shut down the county, not just a few months.”
In mid June our farming community is hellbent on silage making - they won’t be on that day.

Pilllage & Disruption

In Highland Perthshire we need human-scale visitor management and hospitality services – NOT industrialised tourism as propounded by John Devereux, the erstwhile chief executive of the then Scottish Tourist Board two decades ago, when he characterised tourists as ‘walking purses’ to be lightened by locals. By this he upset and dehumanised the tone of the relationship between host and guest to one of mugger and victim.
Little wonder that, in reaction to this, opportunities for cheap pillage and disruption is what metropolitan privateers see when their glance falls on Highland Perthshire - and it looks like our local authority is set to allow them a free run at it. Indeed, if the suspicions are well founded, then the Council itself has been complicit in the whole issue.
Just where were our locally elected representatives during this process - asleep?

The Etape Caledonia Cycling Event, 24 June is set to close:
B8019 (Pitlochry to Kinloch Rannoch)
The Foss Road (Tummel Bridge to Pitlochry, for the return leg of the shorter race)
B846 (Kinloch Rannoch to Bridge of Gaur via north-side)
Bridge of Gaur to Tomphubil (Loch Rannoch south-side & Schiehallion road)
B846 (Tomphubil to Coshieville)
Coshieville to Fearnan road via Fortingall (not via the Duneaves Road)
A827 (Fearnan to Kenmore)
Kenmore to Comrie Bridge backroad, and then the B846 to Weem
Weem to Pitnacree (the Strathtay backroad)
A827 (Pitnacree to Logierait)
The Foss Road (Logierait to Pitlochry)

See also:

Event Organiser's Response to June Anxieties

  http://www.etapecaledonia.co.uk/