Dale speaks to Heritage Correspondent, Alison Campsie, about a proposal for a new Centre Parcs in the Scottish Borders and the SW300 driving route through Dumfries and Galloway
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00:00Hello and welcome to the daily video bulletin for The Scotsman. My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy
00:06Editor of The Scotsman and I'm joined by our heritage correspondent, Alison Campsey. Alison,
00:12we've got plenty to talk about, including a piece that you wrote that ran across the weekend and a
00:20couple of stories up on the side again today. But firstly, the front page of today's Scotsman,
00:26and it was hard not to lead on those horrific scenes that came out of Liverpool late yesterday,
00:34where a car ploughed into a number of spectators who had come to see the Liverpool FC parade.
00:42We know four children among those injured, some 50 people in total injured either in hospital
00:48or receiving treatment at the scene. There is a man who's been detained by police
00:56investigations ongoing and also the emergency response to this one in terms of the closure of
01:03key streets very much makes it an ongoing live incident. There will be more to come on this
01:09story and you can read all the latest at scotsman.com. We also cover, you can see there on
01:14the top left of the front page, a visit to Andy Murray's, Kromlick's venue, restaurant and hotel.
01:23There's some big plans for it. It's going to be renovated early next year and the Murray's as well
01:29as their head chef have an eye on a Michelin star if they can achieve it. So big things coming from that
01:35venue in particular. Alison, we're on to talk about, it feels to me a little bit like the forgotten part
01:42of Scotland. This is sort of the borders on the south, the part that lies between obviously Edinburgh
01:49and Glasgow and the border. I sort of feel from a tourist perspective, it's not somewhere we talk
01:55about a lot. But you've written about it from a couple of different angles and partially
02:00by Centre Parks proposing a massive new development for me.
02:04Yeah, so we're talking about Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish borders and how historically they
02:12haven't been able to attract the same level of tourists as the Highlands, for example. And there's
02:18really, really strong work going on there from the South of Scotland Destination Alliance to really
02:24boost numbers. And they have really, really, really kind of tough targets to meet or tough aspirations,
02:30I suppose, to meet. They want to increase the tourist economy by a billion pounds by 2034.
02:37And already they've had some pretty good results. And there's a chap leading the charge down there
02:42called David Hope Jones and what a great ambassador for both Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish borders.
02:48And you're right, we don't really talk about these places so much. And, you know, personally,
02:53as a reporter, I'm always writing about the Highlands and the islands at this time of year,
02:57when it comes to tourism. But I kind of got the sense that there was something else going on down
03:03in the south that we should really try and tap into. So, like I say, good work going on trying to
03:09bring businesses together and bring thinking together on how to make Dumfries and Galloway and the borders,
03:16kind of destinations in their own right. And they're absolutely buoyed by the fact that Centre Parks
03:25is planning to open its first Scottish site just outside Hoyt. Now, if that all goes ahead,
03:32and it's got to go through kind of community consultation and planning, it could open in 2029.
03:39And people down there, generally speaking, think that this could be really transformative for the
03:46area and really put it on the map. Dumfries and Galloway, I was actually kind of born down that way,
03:53but I've never really ventured into it as a grown up. And when you look at the destinations,
04:00the villages, the beaches, the coastlines, there does seem something very beautiful and kind of off
04:07radar about it. Now, I wanted to mention as well, the driving route down there, the southwest
04:14coast 300, which is a 300 mile route, which starts and ends in Dumfries and kind of goes down the
04:21Solway coast and down to the Muller Galloway. And it just really looks extraordinary. And I was really,
04:27really interested to speak to David Hope Jones about how you handle a driving route in Scotland
04:35in light of what has happened on the north coast 500. Now, the north coast 500
04:41has been overwhelmingly popular. It generates about £22 million a year for the economy of the
04:50Highlands. And to be fair, it's probably more than that. Now that comes from a study which was done
04:55back in 2018, 2019, but a massive impact on the economy. But it's also had a massive impact on
05:02residents and infrastructure, just given the scale of visitors who are now coming to the north coast 500,
05:10which has long been kind of promoted, I suppose, as Scotland's Route 66. It's famous the world over.
05:19And it was really interesting to hear from David Hope Jones, the lessons that they all learned from
05:23the north coast 500, which is basically they don't really promote it. They specifically target
05:30tourist markets, which they know are lucrative, such as the Dutch and the German self-drive
05:36tourism market. People coming from the continent into Newcastle and driving up through Scotland.
05:42They're not kind of like blashing it all over social media and they're not really shouting about
05:48it because they feel that once it starts taking that energy, it kind of runs away and it takes on its
05:54own momentum. I think we really have seen that in the north coast 500. So I think what was really notable is that
06:02the driving route in the south west, they're really working with communities in very distinct areas
06:09that the route passes through on what they want the driving route to achieve and how the people on the
06:15ground want it marketed. So a really, really sort of cautious, gentle approach to making this route deliver
06:23economically, looking for these high value tourists and looking after the communities and businesses on the ground as well.
06:31So really interesting. And, you know, just to be absolutely clear, your man down in the south west coast there,
06:40he is not criticising North Coast 500. He says there's a marketing exercise, it's absolutely out of this world. But actually, there's a little bit more work that we could do to actually make sure that the problem
06:53problems that have hit communities in the Highlands don't hit our communities down here. So really interesting.
07:00And yeah, just, you know, to see the tourist season underway in Scotland, you know, I was up in Pitlochery a couple of weekends ago, the place was absolutely buzzing.
07:10Queues and queues of people outside the ice cream shop and waiting for the fish and chips, glorious sunshine,
07:15Loch for Scali, absolutely moulded with paddle boarders and people sunbathing on the banks, just lovely to see really.
07:21So it'll be interesting to see how the season unfolds from here on in.
07:26Alison, having personally done in the past 18 months, some of that coastal route drive,
07:32including parts around Cucudbury, et cetera, it is a gem. It is really, I think, undervalued a bit,
07:39because there is some lovely scenery and places to visit and a couple of amazing historical sites down there as well.
07:45Yeah, lovely.
07:46I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about Centre Park. So 700 lodges, there's been a series of
07:52community events already for feedback. There's been a visual fly through created. What strikes me as
07:59interesting about this proposal is often these big development projects come with a lot of reservations
08:06from the local community. This one, apart from a couple of areas of objections, seems to have widespread
08:14support at this stage, which sort of bucks the norm, but people seem to be viewing it as an opportunity.
08:23Yeah, that's very much the impression I get. But of course, perhaps if we drilled into that much deeper,
08:30we might find some more nuanced kind of response, but certainly people on the ground that I've spoken to there
08:38think that this is really, really, really positive news. It's a £400 million investment, and it was pointed out to me that
08:45that's a bigger sum than the cost of the Borders Railway. So a huge amount of money, unparalleled investment in that part of Scotland, really.
08:54And it's to create, I think it's 800 jobs during construction and 1200 full-time jobs
09:02once the resort opens, and it's hoped that that'll be in 2029. So it's kind of worked out very roughly that in a wages sense,
09:10that's about £30 to £40 million more in people's pockets in the borders, well, amongst the kind of workforce there at Centre Park.
09:18So I do believe that it is really, really well supported. Of course, it's got to go through planning.
09:28It will be closely scrutinised. But Centre Parks do have a good reputation for listening and reacting to concerns.
09:37And I think it was quite telling that at these community consultation events, you really have Centre Park's top brass there.
09:44You have the chief executive and the chief corporate officer for the whole company in the UK.
09:49They are handling questions and comments directly. So they want to do this well.
09:56That's the impression they give. They want to do it well. And I do think that there's quite a lot of excitement around it.
10:02As I say, they're really trying to develop tourism in borders in Dumfries and Gallery.
10:08And tourist leaders down there think, if we can just get a slice of this activity, I think it's something like 40,000 guests
10:17will stay at Centre Parks over the course of the year. If we can get just a slice of that kind of footfall
10:24and money that's coming into the area, it would be transformative.
10:28And it would be the first Centre Parks development in Scotland.
10:34Yeah, absolutely. Just one point. I kind of missed out my story because I ran out of space.
10:39But so this is, there's been a, if it goes ahead, Centre Parks will be built on land freed up by Duke of Bucleut.
10:47And I think what's normal with Centre Parks is they buy a forest and then start kind of like digging into it.
10:53But here they've bought up land and they're going to build the forest round about it.
10:58So, and it's going to be, I think someone said 1 million trees.
11:03And they will take shape over the next 30, 40 years.
11:06So you can, you get a sense of a real kind of long term commitment to the area.
11:11And if Centre Parks is going to be part of that community, I'm sure they will be very minded to
11:17listen very closely to what residents and businesses are saying to them.
11:21You can read about both those stories. Alison's written about Centre Parks as well as the
11:29South West Coastal 300 route. And just what the people involved with that are learning from the
11:36North Coast 500 as well as scotsman.com. Please follow us on all social media channels
11:41and go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow. We'll have all the latest in the fallout from the
11:49incident in Liverpool on Monday. And we'll also have the latest from around the country, including
11:56details from a press conference being held by Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, with plenty of
12:02attention on his party at the moment. Alison, thanks to you. And thanks to everyone else.