Walking navigation & mountaineering courses in Scotland

Planet

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.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY

Our accommodation for all our skills trips is at our own wholy owned accommodation in the Cairngorms National Park. We live here year round as well and take care to use local suppliers as often as possible. When we can we employ locally, though usually we cover all business tasks in-house.

Our main guide is also the motivator behind the business. When he can not cover the group, or if there are too many clients for him to manage on his own, we refer to our extensive network of local contacts. Having been in business in the local area for over 25 years we know who we can reliably call on to help.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY

We are 100% locally employed.

If we do need to take on additional staff, they are all paid a fair living wage or more.

These courses are not currently suitable to guests with disability issues unless previously discussed.