Continuing our tongue-in-cheek trawl through 50-odd years of blueprints and master plans
by PHIL ROOMS, our TRAVEL EDITOR
In part one we'd reached 1973, and that madcap suggestion from Edinburgh consultants that Jedburgh's Market Square should be made to look like Dubrovnik, or was it Copenhagen? Now read on...
Another grandiose scheme - this one hatched in 1974 - which never got off the ground involved the development of a £750,000 "cultural centre" alongside the England-Scotland border on the A1 road at Lamberton, near Berwick-on-Tweed.
The complex was supposed to incorporate a motel plus a theatre and conference centre to lure northbound travellers, and teach them all about Scotland. But despite local enthusiasm for the venture, the Scottish Development Department and the Department of the Environment stepped in and blocked it on road safety grounds.
The disgruntled architect declared: "We are planning a high-quality centre at Lamberton, not a shanty town of chalets and caravans".
Meanwhile, the fledgling Borders Tourist Association was having to survive on a "hopelessly inadequate" annual budget of £25,000 while promoting a sector estimated to be worth £8 million a year to the Borders economy.
Equestrian tourism always appeared to be a natural fit for the Border counties, and 1975 marked the launch of a campaign to have an "Aviemore-type centre" built with activities for horse riders taking the place of winter sports.. The centre would offer show jumping, riding to hounds, polo, dressage and pony trekking.
A variety of other sporting facilities was recommended to widen the centre's appeal...a fish-farming complex, clay pigeon shooting, an eighteen-hole golf course and an indoor centre catering for at least 14 sports ranging from snooker to judo. Sadly, this one never materialised either.
The fragile united Borders front on tourism suffered a serious setback in 1982 when rebellious Roxburgh councillors pulled out of a proposed joint tourist association for the region with the intention of 'going it alone'. The other three districts - Tweeddale, Ettrick & Lauderdale, and Berwickshire were happy to work together. Roxburgh eventually caved in and joined forces with its neighbours.
However, seven years later, Roxburgh broke ranks again when the district's councillors refused to sanction a demand for £20,000 to help pay for a tourism strategist who was meant to transform the local industry's fortunes.
Yet another firm of consultants had recommended the appointment of the expert on a three-to-five-year contract, and an annual budget of £50k. Their report declared: "If there is not a serious willingness for the bodies involved to work jointly in taking such a first step, it may be as well to agree that, given the problematic administrative structure, a strategic approach towards tourism cannot be pursued in the Borders Region".
But the entire strategy was kicked into touch when Roxburgh chairman Gideon Yellowlees - at the time he also happened to be head of the Scottish Borders Tourist Board - quipped: "My council could not afford £20,000 this year to pay for such a proposal. The whole idea is not viable".
There was an element of friction further west too in 1989 when Dumfries & Galloway Tourist Board members voted 7-3 to sack Beltie the Bull - standard bearer for south-west tourism for five long years - and replace the 'boring' Belted Galloway with an image of a barnacle goose. The controversy kept the letters editor of the Galloway Gazette in work for weeks.
The 1990s saw a whole range of strategies...the aristocratic owners of stately homes - descendants of feuding families - banded together to form Scottish Borders Heritage, another (failed) attempt was made to create a Gateway to Scotland on a 27-acre site near the village of Ayton, and golfers were offered the chance to play 15 local courses for a bargain fee under the so-called Freedom of the Fairways marketing scheme.
The decade was nearing its end when, at the first ever seminar on the Border reivers, the bands of outlaws who created their own medieval crime wave, it was suggested wealthy Americans, Canadians, and Australasians might be prepared to visit the region to trace their family roots.
It would seem virtually every trick in the book has been tried to ignite a tourist boom in the South of Scotland since the 1960s. But there have probably been more failures than successes, according to the evidence in our archives.
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