Demise of an icon

[Troglodyte]

The Highland economy has never been robust enough to sustain itself, but it has done rather well in a feast-or-famine kind of way for the past couple of centuries. Queen Victoria gave a royal kick up the pants to the tourist industry, just when it was needed (taking to the Highlands for the Season had been the habit of well-heeled lowland Scots for centuries, and is well documented) and the aspiring English followed her lead.

Southern money poored in - the sporting estates boomed, demand for accommodation, the 'right' clothing, etc, allowed Highland towns to grow and prosper like elsewhere. But what we see now is as sad shadow of what could be found as recently as 30 years ago. The late summer Scottish Season is still an annual event, but no-one now buys their stalking scopes in Inverness, guns in Perth, tweeds in Aberfeldy - guns are Italian, scopes are German, and the outfits all seem to be of technical fabrics by French of Scandinavian makers. And few wait until they are in Scotland to make the purchase.

Sporting outfits in authentic tweeds now seem to preserve of the estate employees - stalkers, ghillies and the like - who have their work clothes made in their estate tweeds. Campbell's of Beauly seem to have had a stay of execution granted, and the young couple that has taken over the business has continued supplying the estates - until now...

Covid could have an unexpected sting in its tail - governments seem to be discouraging their populatins from travelling abroad, with the aim of boosting their own domestic holiday industry. Scotland has about 60 million neighbours living south of the border, all needing a holiday at some time. It's not difficult to see a solution to the problem if handled carefully.

We shall see...