Wider Community

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Achieving our goals at Leckmelm Wood involves inviting people into the woods to see and participate in what we are doing, but also reaching out to promote these values in the community, locally and nationally. Ecotone Cabins provides a motivation and mechanism to do both of these things better.

Ecotone Cabins has supported the upgrade of the vehicle tracks to all the other organisations in the forest, installed unified signage that welcomes and directs visitors, and installed signage to encourage responsible public walking, cycling and riding access from one end of the forest to the other. This signage is part of our ongoing cooperation with the local Community Trust to establish a cycle path that connects Ullapool with other nearby communities. As part of the development of Ecotone Cabins, we also intend to establish and improve footpaths within our forest, connecting to nearby locations such as the neighbouring Campbelltown and the Leckmelm Gardens & Arboretum. It is part of our ethos that these paths will be signed and welcoming for general public access.

 

The development of Ecotone Cabins has also highlighted the benefits of increasing a wider online presence for Leckmelm Wood, and it has provided the impetus and resources to start doing this. We see this as a great opportunity to learn the skills and develop a strategy to increase our reach, so we are better able to participate in the online environment and champion the values we hold to a wider audience. 

 

We are strongly committed to ensuring that Ecotone Cabins have a positive impact on our local community and environment. It is fundamentally important to us to promote and model a form of slower, sustainable, responsible and “place-based” tourism. To us, this means encouraging and facilitating ways for our guests to engage, connect and build respectful and caring relationships with the people, nature & places they come to visit. We are actively engaged in reaching out and establishing new collaborative relationships with local organisations, producers, providers, facilitators, makers, artists and guides. We want our guests to have amazing experiences that make their stay unique but also benefit the local community, so we are striving to find ways to bring them both together. This part of the project is still in its early stages, but we already have the basis for ongoing collaboration with several local organisations, including local walking guides, paddleboard & bike hire companies, canoe and kayak guides, an independent art school, and several suppliers of local produce and products. Ecotone Cabins is a registered supporter of the North West Highland Geopark and the UNESCO, Wester Ross Biosphere Reserve.