Minginish Community Hall Association (MCHA) has been awarded £1,500 to help improve access of the popular Fairy Pools Path route on the Isle of Skye through the construction of a new bridge and a path network.
The grant is just one of 44 that has been awarded to community groups across Scotland this year as part of our Know Your Routes campaign.
The Skye-based group will use the funds to develop current infrastructure and cater to visitors with a wide range of abilities, creating a more accessible and safer experience for everyone.
Henrik Micski, Project Officer with MCHA, said:
We’re extremely grateful to Paths for All for awarding us this grant and cannot wait to start seeing the value this project brings to our community.
Currently the path is heavily eroded and rocks are starting to stick up through the ground. The trail is really steep, so these issues are making the area increasingly unsafe.
There are river crossings along the route which currently only have stepping stones. Together with our partner, Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland, we are going to construct two bridges to allow visitors to cross the river safely and stop them from walking up and down the riverbank, which causes further damage and erosion.
The main aims of our project are to increase accessibility for everyone, make the area sustainable for tourism and in turn provide long term community benefits.
He added: "We’ve had amazing support from the community here in Skye and the turnout for other events has so far been exceptional – we didn’t realise how important it was to the locals.
“We’ve even had volunteers as young as nine years old right through to 75 years old. We couldn’t do all of this work without them.”
MCHA believe that the ecological infrastructure has not yet caught up with the increasing volumes of people visiting the island, making their work fundamental to the local tourism industry.
The project is estimated to take 12 months with the construction period scheduled to last two to three months.
We awarded £72,560 worth of grants to groups across Scotland as part of the Know Your Routes campaign.
To find out more, click here.
This year’s grants have been funded by Scottish Natural Heritage, Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government.