Monday, April 23, 2007

Hopeless VisitScotland

Surprise, surprise VisitScotland have updated their web site for the Borders offering a 'Spring into summer' promotion to replace the autumn winter offer that was there until at least yesterday. However, Duns, the county town of Berwickshire, is still left off their map of the Borders. Try telling people locally that VisitScotland are trying to push us up ‘the value chain’.

The original story HERE

I decided to check out Duns on the VisitScotland site. Being the closest town to us I thought it would be interesting. Once you've found it on the alphabetical listing of places and click on it up comes this
According the VS this is 'a girl with a horse in a field near Duns' - right. Below is the description of Duns.

Robert the Bruce built a castle here in 1320 nowadays its grounds are a park and a bird sanctuary. Duns became county town of Berwickshire, thriving thanks to its livetsock market. The hill of Duns Law stands to the north of the town, topped by the Covenanters Stone.

Now I've no idea what a ‘livet sock’ market is, but whatever it is there isn't one in Duns. What a truly worthless description of a town, that may not be the tourist magnets that Melrose or Kelso are but it's far from that bad. I then tried booking some accommodation within five miles of Duns in late July. Up came one place. Now either everywhere is full or that is the extent of what is on offer through VisitScotland. There's also only one place to eat according to the web site, the Black Bull. While it's very good, people might be forgiven for not wanting to eat there every night of their stay.

2 comments:

Ewen Bruce said...

I liked this sentence from Visit Scotland; "The area is a paradise for hillwalkers and cyclist of all types while in the River Tweed and its many tributaries, ...". It all sounds a bit wet to me. Maybe they should employ someone who knows something about the English language (or even the Scottish one)?

Richard Havers said...

Ewen, their whole site is riddled with spelling errors, factual errors and a load of old tosh. It would encourage few if any who were not already coming for a visit. This is all part of the £27 million marketing budget. It defies belief.