Edinburgh-based Timberbush Tours has hailed the successful bid by the Minginish Community Hall Association (MCHA) on the Isle of Skye to buy land close to the hugely popular Fairy Pools on Skye to manage the impact of visitor and traffic congestion close to the popular tourist attraction.
This successful land transfer has used a Scottish Government – supported Forest Enterprise Scotland (FES) scheme to transfer publicly owned forestry assets to the benefit of local communities, meaning the land can now be used to provide improved parking facilities close to the Fairy Pools.
Timberbush Tours, which provides frequent coach tours to Skye, had previously raised a number of concerns about the lack of facilities and general infrastructure for the 108,000 visitors who flooded into the vicinity last year, only to find there are just 35 parking spaces and access to the Fairy Pools is severely restricted by a single-track road.
Steve Spalding, CEO Timberbush Tours, says: “Up until now, we, like many other coach tour operators and private vehicles, are facing long delays reaching our intended destination. True, no one could ever imagine the surge of tourism into the area, but we now have a strategy to relieve the pressure on the local communities, particularly around the Glen Brittle area on Skye.
“The community benefit of the land transfer will completely transform the ‘visitor experience’. It’s a tranquil place of outstanding natural beauty, but the Fairy Pools has almost become a shrine to tens of thousands of people from all corners of the world, so something needed to be done to alleviate the traffic burden. It really has been saturation point.”
