Hoots & Havers with James Irvine Robertson July 2005

Some miles out of Aberfoyle it led him to a dead end in a forest and he got lost trying to retrace his steps. He saw a road down a hill and headed for it through a thick patch of brambles. Being unable to see his feet he fell down a hole and became stuck. It took him half an hour to extricate himself and his pack. A little further down the hill he fell down another hole, and this one he enjoyed for somewhat longer before he escaped.

He eventually hit the road, found someone to ask the way and continued. He got lost twice more, and finally gave up trying to cross the hill between Strathtay and Pitlochry. He was told by a nice lady in Strathtay that it wasn't his fault. Lots of people got lost up there.

He reckons he was swindled. He spent thousands of dollars specifically to do this walk and the rank unprofessionalism and sloppiness of the Scottish tourist industry failed to deliver its part of the deal. He was going to spread the word when he got home.

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According to the Lonely Planet Guide, Pitlochry is 'rapidly losing the Highland charm it once possessed'. Visitors to the town have been providing a decent living for its natives for nigh on 200 years. It would be a shame that the current generation is the one that cocks it up.

Aberfeldy has always been a dozier place and those that live here give much thanks for it. Nonetheless tourism is important to the local economy. It's always been a different sort of tourism from that of Pitlochry and it looks as though there's another change in progress.

Over the last few years there's been much local emphasis on the hairy-kneed variety of visitor who splash around in lochs, burns, and rivers during the day and get loudly blotto by night. They have a certain charm, particularly if you're a rubber fetishist, but they are too busy getting wet to spend much money.

Now that Gleneagles has gone down market as a rather rowdy conference centre, Taymouth should become the grandest hotel in Scotland and this strath the haunt of the international super rich. One or two retail establishments in Aberfeldy look as if they're preparing to tap this market and others are bound to follow. I'm not sure that such folk mix well with the wet-suited.

Word in the strath has it that Taymouth has bought Croft na Caber to protect their environs from the noisy things that activity tourists get up to, and that Loch Tay will return to being a place of tranquillity rather than a race track for water-borne motor bikes. Downstream in Aberfeldy there may be more raft launchings and use of the river, but it seems that this sort of tourism may no longer be a growth area - at least for this strath.

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On a narrow Highland road, in the middle of nowhere, in the drizzle, at about 10am, was a police 'slow' notice and a jam sandwich. So we slowed. A little further on, some 30 yards into a boggy field adjacent to a coniferous wood, sat some half dozen cars and a smart helicopter. Around it were clustered a small plantation of umbrellas and a few damp people, perhaps a dozen in all, in their smartest outdoor clothes.

It was a Royal, come to spread sweetness and light. We guessed the Prince of Wales but we didn’t pause at the policewoman who was guarding the road a little further on to confirm it. Perhaps he was there to commiserate about pylons, or to show encouragement about something foresty. Whatever, it seemed all rather sweet and kept those involved off the streets for a morning.

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Within the next week or two, Aberfeldy will have broadband. We will have all singing, all dancing porn. Like many in the area, my computer was zapped during the thunderstorm three weeks ago and rather than replace the necessary bits which, since it’s a Mac, meant £200 and being computerless for the best part of a month, I bought a cheapo laptop in Perth.

Like squishy sofas, computers have to cost a fortune to pay for all the advertisements promoting them, so they are grossly overpriced. Certainly the emporium purveying them in Perth had not stinted in kitting itself out. Lots of staff, lots of hardware and no customers.

I selected a machine chained to a shelf. The man looked doubtful but he said he’d see if he had one for sale. He did. So through the till it went. Up come my details - credit-worthiness, mother's maiden name, council tax band, inside leg measurement etc., and I was deemed worthy of being allowed to make the purchase. The assistant took my plastic, the till squirts out a ream of receipts and I headed for the door.

But I was stopped by a skinny bloke in a uniform. He wanted to see the receipt. Since he was no more than 10 feet from the till, and had closely followed the transaction, it seemed an odd request but I showed it to him and he copied down at least twenty of the myriad of numbers that cover such things on a form. He also wanted my name. I thought about telling him to get stuffed, but he was just trying to put bread on his table so I gave it to him. The only conclusion I could come to was that the shop trusts neither its staff nor its customers.