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Christina Noble looks through the register |
People live and work in rural areas, but they cannot do so in a museum-like time warp.
There must be ways of integrating the economic, social and environmental, and desire to live 21st century lives with maintaining Scotland’s beauty.’ So wrote Donald Dewar, who sadly did not live to see the most original and innovative information centre which stands like a small child behind an older sibling, by the now famous landmark of the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar near the head of Loch Fyne.
The building, unpretentious from the outside but cleverly designed to catch the maximum of light, houses an intriguing collection of both documents, icons and photographs. It is the brainchild of Christina Noble who envisaged a better way to explain Cairndow, its evolution and the changing uses of the land in the past, as well as the present, for those who live here.
Christina spent 20 years leading walking tours in India. Many of her native porters came from remote districts. Few spoke English and most were illiterate. Her ‘clients’ questioned them about their lives and noticed how they responded, visibly gaining in confidence as well as in self-esteem. We all need a sense of identity, wherever we live in the world!
Returning home to Scotland, she felt that tourism was being inadequately presented to the point where people imagined a land of whisky, tartan and haggis with perhaps a few Burns’ songs thrown in!
Visitors coming from foreign countries, and in most cases from urban areas, passed by significant signs of habitation which were both ignored and unexplained.
Admittedly they saw the castles, lochs and mountains, pointed out by couriers as their buses rolled by. Most had heard of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and had seen the films of Braveheart and Rob Roy. Nonetheless they were left in ignorance of how the local people of Scotland lived and worked.
Geographical features such as river beds and boulders, resulting from the melting ice of 10,000 years ago, the outline of ruined shielings, bright green patches of grass round ancient lime kilns, the ridge and furrow of run-rigs and lazy beds of potatoes, and the oyster beds of today were considered to be insignificant, if in fact they were noticed at all.
Christina began her project by forming a committee of local people upon whom most of the spade-work devolved. Funding
In this month's issue Alan Cochrane writes about new penalties for wildlife crimes. Do you think it would be fair to ban keepers for life for certain wildlife crimes?
