Every other Monday during the winter months, some volunteers run a soup lunch for all the villagers to come to. All soups & cakes are provided free, plus there is a raffle. All proceeds go to the village hall restoration fund and are providing some good financial help.
Today there was a choice of three different soups all excellent, but I had the vegetable one & it was so good, more veg than liquid thick warming, delicious.
First shot is just a few of the 30 or so people that attended, which considering our weather was great.
2/ A few more folk including Pam one of the volunteer ‘s who waits on us hand & foot, this is the sort of people we have in this village always willing to help each other.
3/ One of the stalwarts of the lunches is our lovely Bumble, a professional chef who can turn her hand to do anything & is fully involved in all that goes on in the village, a real gem. She announced to us today that she is moving to Edinburgh, what will the village do without her?
In the background of Bumbles photo you will see one of the diners who did really well in the raffle & is holding a brace of pheasants he won. All raffle prizes are donated & Val & Eric do a great job of selling them & taking the money for the lunches. I did take a photo of them but it was out of focus & rubbish, cannot put that on here can I?
Then tonight was another meeting in the hall, held by the Cairngorm National Park Authority on the development plan for the park & how that affects the village. An hour at looking at their plans & then a around the table general discussion on what the villagers want from the plan. I only went down for the first hour & had a look at what is proposed for the area. Of course when the A9 trunk road is finished this could have an impact on us, with all sorts of developments taking place as more tourists choice the much improved route northwards. Within the planning is more expansion of the caravan & camping sites, some of which we knew would & is happening with Atholl Estates enlarging the log cabin site. They7 had a few preferred sites for new housing two small sites with 8 houses on each one. funnily enough both on our side of the village, but 3/4 & 1 mile away from us, not really a huge impact, but lets hope that some will be affordable housing , just to keep the youngsters in the area. As a National Records of Scotland report reckons that over the next 25 years, the population of pensionable aged people within the park will rise by 23% and number of people over 75 will go up a staggering 97%. Looks like it will be the biggest old peoples home in Scotland.
