Loaf Paper 3 Update and forward look

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access Forum

Paper 3 — Update and for­ward look Pre­pared by: Adam Streeter-Smith, Recre­ation and Access Manager

Pur­pose This paper provides an update on the main areas of work both under­taken and planned.

1. Stat­utory Duties Pro­mo­tion of Scot­tish Out­door Access Code • New signs have been developed to sup­port the farm­ing com­munity. These are nar­row gate post signs with mes­saging about dogs & lambs and dogs & live­stock. • A new map sign has been developed to sup­port the Caper­cail­lie & dogs signs (dis­trib­uted last year) which high­lights the sens­it­ive areas where dogs need to be walked on a lead. • New signs also being final­ised for waders & dogs (based on LOAF dis­cus­sion at last meet­ing). • Train­ing ses­sion provided for new intake of sea­son­al rangers cov­er­ing SOAC and respons­ible beha­viour mes­sages. • The new Nation­al Park Author­ity web­site will be live shortly. Respons­ible access mes­sages and alerts (eg paths closed or high fire risk) are now integ­rated into con­tent pages. All the respons­ible access mes­sages can also be found under the head­ing ​“Vis­it­ing / Need to Know”.

2. Devel­op­ment and Man­age­ment of core paths Core Paths Plan review • The Core Paths Plan review is planned to go live late May / early June, until 31 August. The inform­al con­sulta­tion is being hos­ted on our new web­site where the plan can be viewed, along with our pro­posed amend­ments. Com­ments can be left online or sub­mit­ted via email. • Stake­hold­ers and rel­ev­ant landown­ers (where addi­tion­al core paths are pro­posed) are being con­tac­ted dir­ectly and sign­posted to the con­sulta­tion. There will also be wider pub­lic com­mu­nic­a­tions about the consultation.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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• The con­sulta­tion can be viewed here : https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​c​o​n​s​u​l​t​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​c​o​r​e​-​p​a​t​h​s​-plan • LOAF mem­bers are wel­come to respond in a per­son­al / pro­fes­sion­al capa­city. The LOAF will play a future role in review­ing any decisions about key core path plans amendments.

Spey­side Way Gate Replace­ment — Crom­dale to Mains of Dalvey (at the Park bound­ary). The con­tract­or began work at the end of April and has removed most of the out­dated ​“ram­bler” style gates on this sec­tion. The self-clos­ing ped­es­tri­an gates which have been installed where a replace­ment gate was required are made to the prop­er spe­cific­a­tions to accom­mod­ate bikes and horses which will make this sec­tion much more user friendly.

Deeside Way At the begin­ning of April, the Park Author­ity hos­ted the first pro­ject advis­ory group for tak­ing for­ward the Deeside Way Exten­sion. Focus ini­tially is on devel­op­ing the vis­ion and object­ives and the scor­ing sys­tem when con­sid­er­ing route options before more detailed con­ver­sa­tion can occur with landowners.

Glen Tanar Foot­bridge Due to con­sid­er­able amount of erosion, the bridge near the Sheil of Glen Tanar that serves the path up Mount Keen has been closed. Sev­er­al options are being explored: • Under­take riverb­ank res­tor­a­tion upstream of the bridge and shore up the abut­ment that has been affected by under­cut­ting. This would involve ​‘green’ res­tor­a­tion tech­niques such as the use of sec­tions of trees with root plate still attached to nat­ur­ally sup­port the bank­ing and slow down the flow of water by cre­at­ing nat­ur­al pools. This also bene­fits the river eco­sys­tem. • Remove the bridge entirely. This part of the river is very dynam­ic and main­tain­ing a fixed struc­ture in this loc­a­tion could be a con­stant struggle. Espe­cially when cli­mate change and more fre­quent high-water events are factored in. • Move the bridge to a new loc­a­tion, this is chal­len­ging giv­en the dynam­ic nature of the river and would involve new path construction.

Path Pro­mo­tion • Web­site — the Spey­side Way, Deeside Way and Old Log­ging Way are all now fea­tured on our new web­site. Each route is broken down into loc­al sec­tions, each sec­tion described by with dis­tance and path grad­ing. All the com­munity walk routes also now have their own page on the web­site this is a work in pro­gress and more con­tent is to fol­low here.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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• Com­munity path leaf­lets – this year we aim to update and redesign the leaf­lets for Tomin­toul, Boat of Garten and poten­tially Nethy Bridge.

1. Wider vis­it­or infra­struc­ture Snow Roads Install­a­tions A planned pre­vent­at­ive main­ten­ance sur­vey (PPM) has been under­taken based on a 5- year pro­gramme for the three Snow Roads Install­a­tions, Still, the Watch­ers and Con­nect­ing Con­tours. With­in this time frame, the works have been cat­egor­ised into urgent, essen­tial, desir­able & long term. No sig­ni­fic­ant issues have been iden­ti­fied bey­ond gen­er­al care and maintenance.