Eco Friendly Tours

Scotland Travel Blog

Our Eco-friendly tours.

9th November 2021.

Hello, and welcome to our Scotland Travel Blog. The place on our website where we offer ideas and inspiration for private tours of Scotland, including off the beaten track gems, historical places the best local and cultural places. We also cover itineraries based on Eco-Tourism.

It has been a wee while since our last post, but we have not been idle! In fact, we have been very busy working on our business over the second half of the summer, which also included an amazing month-long family tour to the Isle of Mull, Iona and the Outer Hebrides (at least two blog posts there!)

We have seen a return of international travel and have been touring with guests from overseas, which has been brilliant, and we thank everyone who has travelled to Scotland in supporting our tourism industry. Our tours over the second part of 2021 have been mainly day tours to the Scottish Highlands, coastal tours to include St Andrews and Edinburgh city tours.  

We have also continued researching new places to visit, and meeting people who own small local tourist and craft businesses, and we can’t wait to take you to meet those people.

Our last blog on beautiful Aberdeenshire part 1, which was such a delight to write after a wonderful visit, will be followed by part 2 very soon. Watch this space…

For now, we turn our attention to the event of our time - COP26, which is happening in Glasgow, Scotland from October 31st – November 12th 2021.

As we are the only private touring company in Scotland with a Green Tourism award, we thought we would update you on our efforts of being a responsible tourism business, and what we are planning to do in the future.

Off the beaten track gems – A mainstay of our business

All our itineraries include places away from mass tourist sites. We make sure we balance the famous sights, which may have been the inspiration for your visit to Scotland in the first place, with the local gems that we know, giving you an authentic and memorable experience in Scotland. 

For the benefit of the local community

All our itineraries include local experiences with people who are passionate about what they do. We have made many friends with small business owners including food and drink specialists, musicians, arts and crafts people and farm owners to name a few. We have used our time over the last year to meet people and talk about our tours and how we can work together, to deliver an authentic and fun Scottish experience.

Tread Lightly

We are supporting Visit Scotland’s campaign of treading lightly upon our earth. We explore ancient sites on our tours, and we respect the fragile environment in which they sit. We make sure we leave each site exactly as we found them, ensuring it is a memorable experience for the next visit.

New Experiences – Explore More

If you want to go that bit further and explore more, we are equipped with the right itineraries to take you there. Our itineraries are designed to enlighten you in Scottish history, culture, and folklore. We keep up to date with what’s going on whether its new discoveries in historic places or a new food truck or a stunning beauty spot.

Our Green Business commitments

We continue to run our business in the most environmentally friendly way including cutting back on the use of paper, our energy use, our cleaning products for our vehicles and our recycling to name a few.

We donate: We are donating to charities including The John Muir Trust and Trees for Life.

From 2022, all our tours will include a new drinking bottle where you can fill up each day at your accommodation with lovely fresh Scottish water. We will also include Tote bags, so that when you are shopping you do not need to use plastic bags.

We are committed to being one of the most environmentally friendly tour companies, and we are looking at many more exciting itineraries for 2022 and beyond.

You can read more here Green tourism | Eco tourism Scotland (jamescampbelltours.com)

If you would like to book an off the beaten path tour, we'd love to hear from you Contact James Campbell Tours

Until next time,

Stay safe and live green…

A word on COP26…

What is COP26?

It is the United Nations climate change conference, and this is the 26th meeting! This one is important. Perhaps the most important of all the conferences so far, as this is seen as the moment when we can all make a change for the wellbeing of the planet before it is too late. COP21 which took place in Paris in 2015, was a turning point, where every country agreed to work together to limit global warming to below 2 degrees and aim for 1,5 degrees. The commitment to aim for 1.5 degrees is important because every fraction of a degree of warming is devastating to lives and livelihoods across the planet. Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to bring forward national plans setting out how much they would reduce their emissions. They also agreed that every five years, they would come back with an updated plan that would reflect their highest possible ambition at the time. Sadly, it seems the commitments laid out in Paris did not come close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, and the window for achieving this is closing. So as momentous as Paris was, countries must go much further to keep the hopes of holding temperature rises to 1.5 degrees alive. So, Glasgow COP26 2021 is vitally important! And we live in hope that all countries across the world increase their commitment to reducing emissions for the best interests of our beautiful planet.

You can read more at www.ukcop26.org