I have just returned from an interesting week’s holiday in the Scottish Highlands. The first few days were spent listening to political rhetoric on radio 5 whilst the coalition was trying to sort itself out. I am not a great one for politics but I draw one comparison between political parties and membership led organisations. It is not always crystal clear what the voter wants, but sometimes it is necessary to make decisions that will not be popular with the voters but they still have to be taken for the organisation or nation’s good. The elected Government or leaders just have to have the courage to take such decisions and the voters have to accept that they put the leaders there and therefore have to acknowledge their decisions in that light.

I took at trip to the Strathspey Railway which is very similar to K&ESR in that it is 10 miles long, has wonderful scenery (and yes their snow capped mountains were spectacular but our locos work for a living climbing banks!), and that they are working on a major extension. The similarities end there as are staffed by just 80 volunteers and a handful of paid employees, the line is simply engineered with only one automated level crossing and they already have a super carriage storage facility.

We are just about to launch an appeal to raise £200k to build an extension to our carriage and wagon shed, and are about to apply for planning permission to build a carriage storage shed, so we are a little behind our Scottish cousins in that respect.

I was hugely impressed though by the Scottish Tourism Industry. Direction and “Brown” facility signage is excellent. It is very clear what attractions and facilities can be found in the smallest villages, and major attractions are clearly signed for considerable distances. Tourism is recognised as a key industry and supported by Government accordingly. A good percentage of towns and villages have Tourist Information Centres, which have been stripped out of the South East as councils take advantage of removing a non-statutory service from their budgets. Our local Tourist Information is hidden away in the “Gateway” and our visitors comment that our own information kiosk is of more help.

I returned to a file of e-mails that have taken 3 days to work through, and our best ever “Forties” event with over 2000 visitors over the weekend. Straight on the back of this we have had 4 days evacuating 2000 children from kent into Sussex as part of an educational experience. This experience was fully sold and we have already taken bookings for next year which can’t be bad? We even had some teachers doing a reccy last weekend and one school booked for Evacuation 2011 there and then!

We had a great April, and are having a good May too. We get better and better at running major events. Add to that some reasonable weather, the occasional volcanic ash cloud forcing holidaymakers to stay at home, and a little economic uncertainty and we seem to have just the climate for success.