What shall we do to-day, Mum? Let's try Glenfinnan and the Harry Potter train

This pic comes from Loch Sheil Cruises, Glenfinnan. There are sea eagles on the loch. It is about 40 minutes from the cottage. 

By the way we've got a new blog site, called Achingly Beautiful Appin, all about the little villages in the area. Have a look.  

Our new Appin villages blog site

Lovely email from Janet.

Hi John

Yes - just back home from work - not great.

Had a great time down there - weather stayed nice - visited Glencoe (a few times), Inverary, Glenfinnan and Mallaig, Ben Cruachan and of course Oban.

Cottage was fine even with us four large adults - were only really in in the evenings so no problem. Have never seen so much local information - what a job that must be keeping up to date but it was great and has great ideas and descriptions for things to do. FYI - MacTavishes is now just McTs in Oban - an upmarket burger restaurant but they still have the Scottish music and ceilidhs in the upstairs although it's now someone else - can't remember name (starts with an S) but it's a Ceilidh Club and the The Carnoch restaurant in Glencoe Village is now the Glencoe cafe and closes at five. That said we ate at the Climbers Inn - great, the Glencoe Hotel which was also very good and The George Hotel in Inverary which was really good as well.

Anyway we had a great time and the cottage was great even for we four big lumps.

Cheers

Janet
20 brilliant walks around our cottage area
Easy hill walks in Glencoe
Why not walk up Ben Nevis one day?
Easier Munroe walks in Glencoe
Rock and Ice climbing in Glencoe
Cycling and fishing Glencoe
Spectacular wild life around our cottage
Golf in the Highlands, Dragons tooth golf course, Glencoe
Cruising the islands, using Glencoe as a base
Safe, beautiful beaches and bays in Glencoe area
Touring the Highlands by car from Glencoe,
Spring breaks, March April May Glencoe
Winter breaks, Jan Feb March in the cottage
Autumn breaks November December in the cottage

Borrow our cottage clubs, use the voucher for Dragons Tooth Golf Club, Glencoe

Isn't this a totally delightful Golf Course? It is under new management and it is doing well. It is a very dry course so that is good news. Not difficult - well, it is for me, but not for a proper golfer. It sits beside the entrance to Loch Leven and is a couple of miles from our cottage. We keep some LH and RH clubs at the cottage in case guess want to use them, and we recommend it. Good meals there, as well, not expensive and visitors are welcome. Margaret, at the course, has kindly given us some vouchers so that guests can play at reduced fees. Try it. You'll enjoy it.

John

ps we have a week avalable in April still. Just go to our availability and price link and email us from there. The traditional cottage sleeps 4 and has been fully updated and modernised. Very pretty, by the lochside.

Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
20 brilliant walks around our cottage area
Spectacular wild life around our cottage
Golf in the Scottish highlands, Dragons tooth golf course, Glencoe
Weather in the mountains of Glencoe
Weather month by month in the area
Scotlands weather misconceptions
The Viking battle in Glencoe
The true story of the Glencoe massacre
Spring breaks, March April May Glencoe
Honeymoon cottages in Scotland
Find the best Scottish holiday cottages on the internet
Cut the costs of your holidays
Cheap travel in scotland
The Clachaig Inn - great atmosphere in this world famous climbers pub
The Glencoe and Loch Leven Association with 40 B&Bs
Email 14 properties with one click
The new Glencoe Skiing centre information website
Essential information for holidaymakers in Scotland, in one page
Video. Skiing on Glencoe mountain

Great! The latch is fixed. A plonkers guide to getting things done.

"What's that noise? Someone is banging about downstairs. Go and see"
"No, I'm in bed."
"So am I, get downstairs, you baby."

If Ewen wasn't a man I could have kissed him. He was doing the latch on our back door. It has taken six months to fix, I can't do it, being a plonker at DIY and repairs. Better with the chat, me.

All joiners, decorators, handymen, electricians, gardeners, builders in the Glencoe area have a unique marketing style. What Starbucks are to Carpet bomb marketing, they are to Stealth marketing. "Keep your head down lads, and maybe the customer will go away"

Here is how you find a joiner. You drive up and down, and spot one working on the house opposite Catherine's place at Fern Villa. You grab him by the arm, and sell him on the idea of maybe coming to see your job. His name is Ewen, and he does it!

Here is how you find a Glencoe decorator. You ask enough people at the stores, you'll get a name. "Oh, but he is working at the hotel for the next 50 years," they'll tell you. So you now have a name and a location. You've got to con your way past Reception, so look a bit wet, take a notebook in your hand with a pencil in your ear and march up the hotel stairs confidently like a maintenance man. Ask around up there and you'll find him.

Here is how you find a Glencoe electrician. You march into the coffee shop his wife runs, and sooner or later he'll turn up wanting a hamburger. Then you go into your sales pitch again.

Gardener? Ring, go to his place of work three times, text him, ring his home, email him, and seven days later he'll call you in his friendliest manner. From Benderloch, of course.

Thank Heavens for our housekeeper Michelle. Without her, we'd be lost. She is in love with a horse at the moment.

These folks, when you get them, are very very good at their jobs. Really expert. We can't get better ones in the South. We'd be hard pressed to find ones anywhere near as good.

All of this is true. We go to the cottage every winter to catch up with things. Hamish the lovely decorator, tells us why we usually find so little needs to be done. "If you keep your place in good order, well maintained, as you do, then the guests will look after it for you."

You know what? He's right. Thanks guests. You've never let us down yet.

John
ps I suppose I ought to try and sell you something. How about the week starting April 16th? No one booked in then. No, why should we give anyone a special price, we'll let it anyway before then? Oh go on, then, if you write in the subject line of your email "10% off", then we'll give it to you. Only 'cos we like you.

Useful links.
Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
Spring breaks, March April May Glencoe
Weather in the mountains of Glencoe
Weather month by month in the area
Scotlands weather misconceptions
The Viking battle in Glencoe
The true story of the Glencoe massacre
Honeymoon cottages in Scotland
Find the best Scottish holiday cottages on the internet
Cut the costs of your holidays
Cheap travel in scotland
The Clachaig Inn - great atmosphere in this world famous climbers pub
The Glencoe and Loch Leven Association with 40 B&Bs
Email 14 properties with one click
The Friends of Glencoe network site
The new Glencoe Skiing centre information website

Huge amount of snow in Glencoe. It is wonderful

Here is the report I've just received from Andy Meldrum at the Glencoe Mountain Ski resort. What a time for a new business to take over a ski range, huh? (We've still for a weekend break available in the cottage from next Friday, and a week available from the following Friday after that, the 12th. See the previous blog for details)

John
---------------------

It's been snowing!!! (says Andy)
If you've not already heard it's been snowing at Glencoe over the last 48hrs........
.......not just a few inches but feet at the bottom of the hill and metres at the top.
Unfortunately we don't have any pictures as everyone has been too busy digging.

The report from the hill tonight is:-

Lots and lots of fresh snow. Not only have the team spent the day digging out lifts, they intend working through the night to ensure that all runs and tow tracks are in the best shape possible for tomorrow. All runs are expected to open with the exception of the flypaper (big avalanche risk). It is possible to ski to the carpark on deep soft snow.

It looks like being an awesome weekends skiing with moderate NE winds and an 80% chance of cloud free munros according to the mountain weather information service.

I look forward to seeing you on the hill.
Andy

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RANNOCH MOOR ROAD, was closed but it should open quite quickly.

If you get stuck before crossing the Moor, then continue in the Oban direction until you get to Connel. Turn North there over the Etive bridge, and go up the Appin coast, the scenery will take your breath away, go past our cottage and then you'll get to Ballachulish, Glencoe asnd Fort William. The Rannoch road is rarely closed but it has been to-day, and they clear it quickly.

The road in front of our cottage rarely gets very deep in snow. Being right on the coast helps, we have a little micro climate there. More sunshine, a bit less rain, than in the Glen.

AVALANCHE ON THE BUCHAILLE.

It is always so tragic that in the midst of all this splendour and beauty the real rish of extreme danger still lurks. New snow on top of old does the damage. It is an objective danger and there is little you can do about it apart from being very wary in the obviously dangerous gullies and steep hillsides. Terribly sad. We've had a lot this year in Scotland.

John
The Glencoe skiing new web site, looks lovely

Skiing Glencoe and Nevis range, cottage is midway between the two
Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
Spring breaks, March April May Glencoe
Winter breaks in the cottage
Weather in the mountains of Glencoe
The Viking battle in Glencoe
The true story of the Glencoe massacre
Weather month by month in the area

LOCAL GLENCOE SITES.
The Clachaig Inn
The Glencoe and Loch Leven Association with 40 B&Bs
Email 14 properties with one click
The Friends of Glencoe network site

HOW DID VISITSCOTLAND GET INTO THIS STATE?

On a hot day in June, Gillian and I thought to stay on Tiree for a few days. We had heard about it so often on the weather forecasts, we just wondered....

We got a Scottish Tourist Board catalogue. The Island looked nice. The book showed three self catering properties and a couple of hotels - one of them on Coll I think.

We didn't think there would be much to choose between the islands, silly us. we were young and ignorant. It was 1978 after all.

There were only three ways to find B&Bs or self catering in those days. You sent off for the Scottish Tourist board (later VisitScotland) catalogue or you called in at one of their many Tourist offices around the country. Their catalogues were then, and are to-day beautfiully designed. The third way was to go there and take pot luck in finding somewhere. That's more my style, but not Gills. We had a lovely time.

I've just looked up Coll and Tiree on the VS website. Two hotels and one self-catering. Both islands together. Then I looked up the community website for Tiree alone. 18 self catering owners and many more properties.

VisitScotland had done nothing wrong to lose that share of the market. The market shattered into fragments.

They lost their monopoly on accommodation, because more and more property owners started to do their own marketing using the web. As a visitor to-day you can still take the VS catalogue, you can still respond to small ads in the Travel Sections of the papers, you can still get referrals from friends, and pick up leaflets, you can still drive past and hope for luck - well, not for self catering maybe, but for B&B certainly. But the proportion of visitors doing things in this traditional way is getting smaller by the minute. One large modern commercial holiday facility with a world-wide reputation reports that only 17% of its business involves "literature" For them, and for most, past users and referrals are still big, but the biggest is the web.

Even the web itself is fragmented. You can find agencies which will book you into properties, charging owners from 25% to 35% and making a surcharge on the buyers as well. VS does this, but at lower cost. Owners often don't like agencies. We got shot of the only one we ever used within six months.

You can find directories which list the property details and the website together with photos and you can contact the owners direct. For this owners only need simple and cheap websites but the owners rely heavily on three or four listing directories plus repeats and referrals.

You can find community sites where everyone gets together for marketing their
area. Or you can search Google or Yahoo and find property owners websites for yourselves.

I love it. I've spent 53 years full time at the highest levels of marketing, around the world and I've never ever imagined a medium so rich, so quick, so responsive to ideas.

I made a change to our website last week and already I am excited to see the initial response. Last week? The web is wiping out industries as we speak and will wipe out more. VS was caught in the turmoil.

It is no good owners complaining that VS does not get them as many bookings as they feel it should. It can't. I can list our site openly on Undiscoveredscotland.com for about £70 a year, and also give them our late availability weeks to push. If they get me only three bookings a year that is an ad cost of under 4%. Sign up to three or four others and I'm in business with that kind of cost ratio. I'd still rather get my own visitors.

Are visitors who use VS happy with the grading facilities? I think they are very happy indeed in the main. We use it ourselves to find B&Bs, (but we do not book through it) My pal booked a two week tour of Scotland for four people through it, and each of us was very happy with the properties.

But practically all owner-members have complaints about VS, and these days if VS inspectors start getting stroppy with what they want, then owners tend to shrug their shoulders and
leave. When they do so they tell everyone they know about it, so the rot spreads.

The VS marketing and the grading systems need re-engineering. At one time so did ship building, textiles, gas lighting, candlestick makers, monocles, coal mines, horse and carriages, peat gathering, girdles, snuff taking, musket balls, right back to flint knapping. It never comes back in the way it was.

I'll suggest how to re-engineer in another piece.
John Winkler
bayviewkentallen.co.uk

Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland
Fort William and the accommodation to the South
Last minute, late availability Glencoe, self catering cottage
Honeymoon cottages in Scotland
Weather in the mountains of Glencoe
Cottages Scotland and Coastal cottages
Scotland, how to find them
Weather month by month in the area
Last minute, short breaks, in Scotland, owners sites direct
Scotlands weather misconceptions
Facts about self catering holidays
Short holiday breaks, special last minute deals, self catering Scotland
Special self catering offers in Scotland
Advice on driving in Scotland
Skiing in Glencoe