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Although the Highland scenery is stunning, it's one of the less affluent areas of Britain. Our operation is entirely Highland based, both as a company and whilst delivering the vacations. With all our walking vacations & mountaineering courses we employ qualified local guides who live and operate in the Scottish Highlands. They're an integral part of the local community and they know the intricacies of the local mountains, about the wildlife, the local environmental issues, etc. Through employing local guides we maximise both your vacation experience and the benefit to the local economy, often at a time of the year when visitor numbers are low. We source as much produce as we can locally and we support a number of local business', both directly and indirectly.
Boat of Garten (our location) has an energetic and vibrant community putting on a good number of lively social events through out the year including comedy plays, ceilidhs and both festivals. We encourage our guests to support these by scheduling, where possible, courses to coincide with them.
During the winter months we maximise the use a wood Burning Stove to supplement the heating - the overall efficiency of these stoves is superb, particularly when you consider the energy used in production of other fuels. Wood is a renewable fuel and doesn't introduce any further carbon into the carbon cycle as fossil fuels do. As part of our continuing commitment to environmentally responsible vacations we are currently in the process of installing a wood pellet boiler here at the lodge (our main base for our walking vacations) here in Scotland.
May of our navigation courses take place during the spring - an especially important time of year for the wildlife. On all our vacations we have a 'leave nothing, take only photographs' policy. Our guides are asked to explain and encourage this policy. For Example, leaving an apple core or feeding a seagull on a mountain summit may seem innocuous but it detracts from the 'untouched wilderness' aspect and can have a detrimental knock-on effect e.g. on the indigenous wildlife.
We invite every traveler who books a vacation via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the vacations they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same vacation can have different views!
