Fortrose and Rosemarkie Golf Club president Douglas Simpson discusses the scale and impact of coastal erosion around the course.
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00:00 The first and second T's, we've almost lost these T's.
00:07 So it's been very dramatic, very surprising.
00:10 And as far as we can see, there's no other explanation for it
00:13 than it's the climate emergency, rising tides and bigger storms coming in.
00:18 I mean, a peninsula like this that's just made up of a glacial deposit,
00:22 there's always going to be erosion.
00:24 On the other side, there's been erosion and we've tried to deal with that,
00:27 but never, never in anything like this on a scale.
00:30 If this was to happen over a period of ten years,
00:32 we'd lose virtually the whole of the First Fairway
00:35 in a course that has been here since 1793.
00:38 Yeah.
00:39 So, I mean, that's a huge impact on the golf course and the golf club itself,
00:43 even not taking anything into account with the environmental side of it.
00:48 Exactly.
00:49 And, I mean, this peninsula is a very, very popular tourist attraction.
00:53 Golfers come from all over the world to play here
00:56 because it's a unique course, the location and so on,
00:58 and because it's such an old golf course,
01:00 the 15th oldest golf course in the world.
01:02 So, you've got Americans, you've got people from all over the world.
01:06 But the dolphin, the Potomac's dolphins at the Channery Point
01:11 are an enormous attraction as well.
01:13 So, you get walkers coming down the core path here.
01:17 And we've always existed with that.
01:20 We work harmoniously with the tourists that come here.
01:23 But now the path has gone.
01:26 So, pedestrians are walking through the golf course to get to the lighthouse,
01:30 and there's obviously big problems with that.
01:33 It's a huge financial undertaking for the club
01:37 and sort of anybody who wants to support the club
01:39 to fix these issues and get the path back into place.
01:43 Can you maybe talk us through some of the challenges that you've found with that so far?
01:46 Sure.
01:47 Well, the cost to protect the first and second tee,
01:51 which we're doing just now, there's a digger you'll see along the coast there,
01:55 that's protecting this.
01:56 We have to protect these two tees in the first instance,
01:59 otherwise it changes the golf course quite radically.
02:02 The cost to do that is over £100,000.
02:05 But there's of course the whole rest of the first fairway and part of the second fairway
02:09 needs protecting as well.
02:10 So, you can see the sort of figures that are involved.
02:13 And our intention is to work collaboratively with others involved,
02:17 like Highland Council and Scottish Water,
02:19 because there's a sewage pipe that runs along for about 100 yards here.
02:23 So we're raising as much money as we can.
02:26 We've got a GoFundMe site started and so on.
02:29 Scottish Water are making a contribution to this part here,
02:35 which will be about a third of the cost of what we're planning so far,
02:39 which is helpful.
02:40 We've found difficulty getting Highland Council involved,
02:44 although they're responsible for this path, which is now gone.
02:47 So, if we could get better collaboration, better communication with them,
02:52 that would really help our case, I think.
02:54 Attenborough recently did a feature on the bottlenose dolphins here.
02:58 So, it's a world-known area, this,
03:02 and we think it's very much in Highland Council's interest
03:07 to help us get this footpath back, to support what the golf club's trying to do.
03:11 We know councils don't have a surplus amount of money, shall we say,
03:17 and they have big problems.
03:18 But even if we could get more advice and sources of funding that they could lead us to
03:23 and help collaborate with us, we'd find that really helpful.
03:26 So, as far as the golf club goes, then, we're just coming into the summer months,
03:30 there's going to be peak tourist season in not too long.
03:32 What sort of impact do you envision this erosion having over the immediate future,
03:37 while you're maybe getting the repairs done?
03:39 Well, there's certainly going to be more golf balls on the beach,
03:42 because the fairways get narrower and narrower.
03:44 But, you know, when you've got hundreds of pedestrians using this path every day
03:49 and you've got golfers teeing off, and they're much closer to the golf course now,
03:53 and on the golf course than ever they were before,
03:56 you know, there's a health and safety implication there we need to take really seriously.
04:01 So, that's the implications we're worried about.
04:04 The other thing is, we're coming into spring, there's going to be spring tides,
04:08 and there's going to be even more damage done to the golf course.
04:11 So, it's not something that can wait for a year or two years,
04:13 it's something that we have to tackle now.