With the exceptional May and June weather, visiting boat numbers to the Ulva Ferry pontoon have increased during this period. Feedback from yachtsmen and others has been very positive, the wonderful location and the fantastic restaurants nearby – the Boathouse Ulva and Ballygown. Some visitors hire Ulva Ferry community transport – usually the electric car, to explore the wider area and visit local businesses. It is, however, clear from survey comments from boat crews that pontoon shore facilities are required to attract further boats to the area, provide wider economic benefits and sustain the pontoon.

The feasibility study into acquiring a site to develop a shore facilities building and amenities through a Scottish Land Fund application process has continued over the past year with widespread community consultation, surveys and site appraisals.

Research undertaken by business consultants Community Enterprise have shown wide support for the project within the local community, with proposed facilities aimed to be beneficial to the local residents – as well as visitors to the area, securing and increasing jobs and provide economic benefit locally.

Masterplanning work has been undertaken by local architects Thorne Wyness, and as a result of extensive appraisals of 4 different sites, working with USCA, the local community group, and the landowners, the site nearest to the pontoon head has been identified as the most suitable to accommodate the shore facilities and to complement existing commercial activities and future growth of the area.

Work continues to submit the stage 2 application of the Scottish Land Fund in August, and identify capital funding for development.

It has been a pretty busy month getting out and about around the island, the good weather has helped.

I had a session with George Watson’s School  from Edinburgh who were working towards their John Muir Award. We did a bit of path clearance so that geocaches could be accessed a bit easier.

A big pleasure and great fun was having Tobermory Primary School’s P1 and 2 in Aros Park, we played lots of running around games, built hedgehog houses and to end they all got involved in putting up small tents and then eating their hotdogs inside.

One very pleasant Thursday evening I accompanied the Scouts to Langamull Bay to do a beach clean and have a BBQ. Thank you for inviting me. Luckily Langamull had very little rubbish so less to carry back to the cars.

After being created locally the directional signage has now gone in on the Lighthouse Path, Tobermory and benches and picnic tables are starting to appear along the way.

Our events programme and what we have been up to can be followed  on our blog page: www.mullionarangerservice.com and we regularly post to Facebook at Mull and Iona Ranger

Jan Dunlop,

Countryside Ranger Manager,

Tel: 01680300640 or Mob: 07765898600. jan.dunlop@forestry.gsi.gov.uk;

On Sunday May 20th Mull and Iona Community Trust (MICT) held an ideas gathering event for the Walled Garden in Aros Park. About 40 people came out to explore the garden and to talk about their memories or experiences of being in the garden over many years.

For some, the garden has always been abandoned, and yet it still forms part of their regular walk in the park. For others, they could remember playing in the garden when they were young, and some could remember details about how it once looked and for others, they simply didn’t know it was there at all.

Part of the exercise was to find out if visitors to the park wanted the walled garden restored, and thankfully all those who attended said that they would. Another aim for the afternoon was to find out ideas about what the garden could become once it is restored.

Ideas came from all sides, and all were very good. Whether some of them would ever be possible is questionable, but all the ideas were welcome, and these will be taken forward to the next community consultation meetings that will take place soon.

The garden is pretty big, 117metres long by 35metres wide, so it is quite a space. There are many well established trees in it, plus the foundations of buildings, and the original arched entrances. It’s neither flat nor rectangular so there could well be challenges ahead. From the ideas and comments from the event, most people would like to see a combination of spaces and functions being made available, i.e. not just a formal garden, or allotments, but a combination of two or three different functions. Whether this opinion changes from the subsequent consultation meetings remains to be seen, but this has been a tremendous start.

On Thursday 5^th July there will be a further consultation session, this time drop in meetings to be held in the afternoon and evening at the Scout Hall in Tobermory. These sessions will be to capture new ideas, to develop further ideas from the last meeting and to start to form a Steering Group. There will be some draft designs on show, these are guides at best and nothing has yet been decided.