This week Scotland marked the start of its “Scottish Climate Week” – an annual event in Scotland dedicated to addressing climate change and promoting sustainability. With this in mind it’s a great time to mention the ”Climate Action” award in last weeks Aberdeen City and Shire Thistle awards ( #ACSTA23) ceremony held at the Chester Hotel in Aberdeen. 

14 tourism awards were presented last Friday night to acknowledge outstanding achievements celebrating excellence, innovation, and dedication within the tourism and hospitality industry within the Aberdeen City and Shire region of Scotland. We are proud to announce that Cairngorm Bothies won the “Climate Action” Category sponsored by Wood Winters Wines & Whiskies. It was great to see one of our guests’ favourite Stonehaven eateries; The Bay Fish & Chip shop receive a highly commended certificate for their achievements in this category too.

Our Climate Goals

Its hugely important to our company values to take part in Scotland’s ambitious climate goals, including its target to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045. We share the same global fight against climate change and play our part in protecting the natural environment and its Eco system within our Blelack Estate in the Cairngorms National Park.

6 New Cairngorm Bothies in Aberdeenshire

Earlier this year we launched a further 6 off grid, pet friendly bothies. These are purposely built on stilts above the forest floor to minimise disruption to the natural forest environment. To this end we designed the integration of the units into the forest with minimal impact to the forest flora and fauna. We are delighted that our Bothies design and sustainable tourism model has reached the finals in next months Iver Salvesen Award for Combatting Climate Change sponsored by Murray Beith Murray. The Scottish Land & Estate “Helping it Happen” award ceremony is held in Edinburgh on the 5th October.

Our company has a Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified sustainable forest, which means the forestry practices we employ are sustainable. We have an active planting regime and in April we successfully planted replacement trees around our Bothies. This was to combat the the changed landscape we have from Storm Arwen and Malik.

Naming the new Cairngorm Bothies

Our new phase of bothies are named after local tree species. Each have had their name sakes planted nearby making for a great setting of local flora and fawn at the Bothies.  It has also been a positive year to see the forests natural recovery with its green shoots taking a good hold in the forest floor. Our owner Dr Gordon Drummond explains more in the video below.

 

More “Behind the Scenes” Playlist

While combatting climate change starts with us. It is our ambition to raise awareness and encourage our customers and staff to always think environmentally friendly green living. This will then have the positive effect to create a more solid and sustainable world.

Early this month we took part in its first Aberdeenshire’s Doors Open Days. Over 50 Businesses across the Shire opened their doors to the public. Dr Gordon Drummond welcomed visitors to a walk & talk “Behind the scenes” tour of the Bothies. The Doors Open day event included the launch of Geocaching along the walks & trails in the Blelack estate forest. Our visitors enjoyed an introduction to geocaching, a modern day treasure hunt with a smart phone.

Looking to the future

Our team are looking forward to taking part again; and offering more opportunities on raising awareness of our sustainable business. To learn more of these talks and updates then please sign up to receive our Environmental News.