Inspiration

Looking at the Be Local and SCOTO websites always makes me want to start travelling, to get out on the road and meet people who care about the place they call home and who contribute to making it an even better place. When you scan through both websites there are so many services and experiences provided by communities  museums without walls, heritage centres, guided walks, walled gardens and growing spaces, bike hires, community pubs and cinemas, music cafes, bunk houses, pods and campsites….and plenty of community toilets to ease the journeys.

National Bus Pass

I am one of 2.3 million Scots who has a national bus pass. Between us we go on 170 million bus-pass rides a year. Those journeys are worth over £400 million and of course a good deal more is spent as the pass-holders visit attractions and explore new places. So the idea came
to combine the delights of community tourism, the beauty of Scotland and free bus travel – “SCOTO Adventures with a Bus pass” was born.

The main reason for doing this is to have a fun and interesting time, but there are also some serious points. We are in a climate emergency and bus travel is greener than using a car. Attracting bus pass users makes good business sense for many Community-led Tourism outfits; and these Community-led Tourism enterprises have important things to say about pride of place and the centrality of communities. Using rural buses helps to support a vital (and sometimes threatened) local service – bus companies are recompensed for transporting bus-pass holders.

We know that not all our communities are well served by public transport and often the final mile is the biggest challenge. Those communities that are well served can reach out to this market with suggested itineraries for different interests – walkers, history buffs and foodies are examples. And I hope to demonstrate that even some places that aren’t particularly well served by public transport can be visited with a bit of time and effort.

Travelling Recommendations

As inspiration, back in February SCOTO’s friends Anne Sofie and Eirik from Bolder did a similar thing. They were coming to our conference in Angus and decided to come a week early with their young son and to try out the idea of being temporary locals. Their only plan was to pick up a hire car from Aberdeen Airport and then follow advice and recommendations from the SCOTO Network. Their journey took them north through Aberdeenshire, then Moray before heading across to Ullapool in Wester Ross and back via Loch Ness and Perthshire before arriving in Montrose. Their over-riding feedback was that they saw so much more by being guided by locals and felt very welcome.

And I’m now going to see how this could pan out with just me, my bus pass, some time and the advice of the SCOTO Network. I’m already learning that relying on buses forces you to slow down – many places don’t have buses on Sundays for example, so you just have to wait until Monday.

My journey begins on 18 August and I am already planning the first stages in the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, having initially reached out to our SCOTO network on WhatsApp. The warmth of the invitations has been really touching. My challenge for now is to make sure that I travel light – apparently there is such a thing as “odour-free clothes” and years of travel in the tropics mean that I am a dab hand at using a kitenge (like a sarong) as nightwear, a towel, a pillow, a sheet and a shawl. I’m starting in Edinburgh after a few days at the Fringe, and have to end up in Aberdeen to board the ferry to Lerwick in Shetland, where I catch the bus to take me north back home to the island of Unst.

Travel Time

I have the time to do this because two things have happened recently – Wild Skies Shetland, which I chair, now has a Project Development Worker which frees up a lot of time, and my professional life of international development has been so ravaged by Musk, Trumpism and UK budget cuts that I have decided to fully retire from that world.

The Plan

So how will it work? Through social media and WhatsApp I will let folk in the SCOTO network know in advance about my broad whereabouts and direction of travel. And then we’ll take it from there, based on what people suggest. The thing I’m most looking forward to is the conversations – community tourism is rooted in a love of people and place, no matter what the current challenges we face.

Does anyone have any suggestions of where I should go? The first few stages have been mapped out, starting in Edinburgh, to Galashiels, Peebles, Eskdalemuir and Langholm. Then westwards towards and beyond Dumfries, where they are no specific plans as yet.

Suggestions most welcome!

Wild Skies Shetland and SCOTO Director, Catriona Waddington

You can follow Catriona's story on her SCOTO Adventures with a Bus pass Facebook Page.  Or email info@scoto.co.uk with ideas.