Where have all the visitors gone.....

I am reminded of the old Pete Seeger song "Where have all the flowers gone?" - except in this case it's "Where have all the visitors gone?".

After seeing record numbers through the door of the Visitor Centre in May (up 67% on last year), June numbers have crashed again. June has of course been a bad month weatherwise even for NE Scotland, both cold and wet: could it be, to go back to Pete Seeger (well, nearly!) that the response is "Caught pneumonia, everyone" ?

Our figures for May had, of course, two major boosts. The first was the week-long local Whisky Festival which without doubt attracted large numbers of visitors into the area, and the second was the 'Julia Bradbury effect' following a showing on BBC2 of the episode of "Railway Walks" that was shot on the old railway between Craigellachie and Ballindalloch. (This is available on DVD from the BBC and also from outlets such as Amazon). The night after this was shown there was a spectacular spike of hits on the Speyside Way website, and since then we have had a real influx of visitors asking where the locations were!

Never under-estimate the power of the media!