ScottsLand Festival at Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park

This year is the bicentenary of Sir Walter Scott’s long narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake, celebrating the Trossachs and credited with attracting Queen Victoria and, through her, the Royal Family and countless other tourist to Scotland.

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, under CEO Fiona Logan, has neatly hitched its wagon to the poem and s hosting the inaugural ScottsLand Festival, running from June to October.

This is a festival for the active and the observer, for people of all ages and for families.

It starts this Saturday (29th May) with the Lakeside Brass Lady of the Lake Concert in Callander at 7.00pm.  This is an all-ticket (booking is essential) ‘exclusive, intimate, one-off musical performance inspired by The Lady of the Lake composed by and featuring Phil Cunningham with Aly Bain and very special guest performers Eddie Reader and Karen Matheson’. (For tickets phone 01360 850 274.)

Then, from 5th June onwards, there is a series of outdoor, literary, arts and education events, all interesting, some highly innovative. Full details are at the Scottsland website. The education events start with the availability of the right audience – in July.

Scott’s poem sold 25,000 copies in its first 8 months. It created a Scotland of romance and intrigue and opened up a wide awareness of the landscape’s natural delights.

Victoria and Albert came to the Trossachs in its wake, then moved north to explore more, seeing Perthshire littered with pictureque follies to appease Victoria’s fondness for the gothic. Further northwards again, they leased a house in Balmoral and then built Balmoral Castle.

The poem inspired creativity on other art forms – like Rossini’s opera, La Donna del Lago, Schubert’s Ave Maria, and the American Presidential anthem, Hail to the Chief, born from a line in The Lady of the Lake.

With the National Park including a great swathe of Argyll, in Loch Lomond and in the Argyll Forest, this is a festival we can ‘own’, support and enjoy.