Opinion Pumped Storage Hydro in the Highlands - Is Anywhere Still Off Limits?
Are the enormous Earba and Fearna hydro projects merely the thin end of an ever bigger wedge? In a planning free-for-all for energy in Scotland, where will we draw the line? It's not yet too late to shed light on the murky world of Highland meg...
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£10 entry and a satsuma? In my day we paid sixpence to enter and the winner was lucky to get a pat on the back. Bloody inflation.
I'm not a fell runner, but what irks is the presumption that these events have exclusive access to the "course" (i.e. our shared wild spaces), in much the same way as filming companies have recently blocked access to Windgather or Ilkley.
Seriously, what would stop a fell running club running a parallel event at the same time over the same hills?
Or a bunch of individuals "gate crashing"?
You've missed my main complaint of the wild being clagged up with lots of premium branded challenge tw*ts...
What they get for the £££, they take from the rest of us.
If you want a tough challenge run laps of a inner city multistory carpark on a wet and windy November night - you can even have a tepee and yurt massage experience on the top floor but watch out for the sharps and pools of piss.
I'm sure an impressive and branded back drop for you to be photographed in front can be arranged of so you can "impress" the office with your triumph on Monday.
Nothing whatsoever; the mountain is public. But some people like those bigger, more expensive events. Why should they not? What they're paying for is the high quality support, not access to the hills.
I've done a Rat Race event (the one on the Cornish coast) and while it was fairly expensive I could see where the money was spent so it didn't feel a rip-off. There was no attempt to block anyone else from using the area. These aren't super-premium but they're certainly pricey.
Fundamentally I think "snobbery" is bad just as genuine exclusivity is - the hills are for all of us, rich and poor. All I'd be pushing for is that these expensive events do spend a decent amount on donating to conservation projects and similar in the area - those paying £500 for an event simply won't notice an extra £50 towards that, say.
"What worries me most about a number of these events is the gentrification of outdoor spaces."
It's the commercialisation of them that bothers me, and the subsequent association in the minds of others - most definitely not the UKC/H community, I should add - that our wilder places and activities in them are accessed by paying a fee; freedom to roam, as long as you bring your credit card.
Events like sponsored three peaks challenges are a different expression of the same idea. I don't like them either.
T.