By: B.B.
I have become familiar with the town of Nairn on the Moray Coast in recent years, but it’s always a pleasure to revisit old haunts.
Nairn is a Victorian seaside town favoured by Charlie Chaplin, who apparently was a regular holiday visitor. Its streets are filled by affluent villas and an excessive seagull population, which must be the noisiest colony in any part of the country.
Like all older towns, Nairn has problems coping with modern volumes of traffic. The main A96 Inverness – Aberdeen passes through the town and there is only one vehicular bridge over the River Nairn.
The solution Nairn has adopted is to install multiple sets of traffic lights – more coloured lamps than a forest of Christmas trees. The effect of these lights is to reduce all traffic to a crawl and greatly increase journey times and driver frustration. During my visit, this was not helped by the excavation of the A96 for pipe laying, more traffic lights!
The highlight of the week I was in town, was the annual Nairn Highland Games. Unfortunately, this was on the day of my departure, so I was unable to witness the event. When I departed, the rain was incessant, I wonder if this is a traditonal feature of the games?
When out and about I had the opportunity to inspect some toilet facilities in various venues. On a visit to a nearby golf clubhouse, I found the door to a designated disabled toilet extremely stiff. Upon forcing the door open, I discovered why: the room was full of stored items, buckets, mops and various utensils. At a tea shop in Nairn, the owner had a clean, tidy toilet and even provided a step under the wash basin, presumably to allow a child to access the facility. In the village of Cannich in Invernesshire the toilet facilities are contained in the refurbished village hall, and the door is conveniently left open for visitors to access.
As a footnote: the award for the best scone consumed on this trip goes to the remote Tomich Hotel, by Glen Affric, where it was served apparently straight from the oven. Not sure how they accomplished that, but it was delicious!
My thanks as always to the Lovat Lodge Hotel, Nairn for understanding and catering for the needs of people with mobility issues.