Have you ever wondered whether or not there was some truth in the stories of monsters in Loch Ness? Here are all of the answers.
Loch Ness Monster Explained & Loch Ness Understood: The Co-Founder of the Loch Ness Centre Provides a Personal Perspecti...
The closure of the Abbey was a great blow to me. It was such a worthwhile project and we had been so close to a solution to its problems. If we had concentrated on the business and driven hard for profit then the whole thing might have eventually been successful. I must blame myself for allowing two monks in particular from the Abbots' Panel, Fr Richard Rotter of Buckfast Abbey and Fr Andrew Brenninkmeyer of Worth Abbey, to divert me from that objective into the more tempered approach to cater for the monks' needs. They had given that encouragement with the best will in the world, but without thinking through the short term financial ramifications.
Refurbishing the monastery and preparing for General Chapter diverted energy, resources and people into areas where profit could not be generated. Keeping the Abbey open in the winter for a Retreat Programme which deteriorated into farce was a serious error, for which Fr. Stephen was culpable.
There was also, towards the end, a misunderstanding of the direction we were taking towards the major project to be assisted by Historic Scotland, the Local Enterprise Company and probably the Heritage Commission.
Obviously we were not trying to make a loss within the Abbey Enterprises and we kept that loss to a minimum, but it was not our major concern as the accountants will verify. The big project would have reversed that quickly and effectively and brought the Abbey back into good condition within just five to seven years.
None of it was now to be. In January 1999 I was thrown back onto my own resources.
I re-started my management consultancy business, but it is very difficult picking up old contacts and this swung into an attempt to start an on-line shop. My Scottish and Celtic Mall started to do reasonable business and then we amalgamated with TopScot.com. In the late nineties, however, there was still a great suspicion of on-line trading and it was exacerbated by the banks who did their level best to scare people away from using their cards on-line. This was not going to be an adequate source of income.
I continued to develop the commercial side of my and www.Loch-Ness.com websites and began to toy with the idea of setting up my bus tour again, but this time with a more history oriented slant taking advantage of all of the historical research I had conducted for the Abbey heritage centre and Macbeth Experience.
Discover Loch Ness was born. Initially using a sixteen passenger Leyland DAF minibus I began conducting tours which would aim to educate passengers in the natural history of the area, the history of Scotland and, of course, my take on the Loch Ness story. In effect I was going to make use of everything I had learned during my staging of the Story of Scotland at the Abbey and the Loch Ness Centre in Drumnadrochit to provide a really rounded Highland experience.
The first year was a great success. During the second year I put in for a Tourist Board award and was given four stars, the highest star rating for any tour based in the Highlands of Scotland at the time.
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The tour went from strength to strength and it was inevitable that we expand. Should it be into a second and third vehicle or should the quality of the vehicle be enhanced. We decided on the latter and purchased a Toyota Salvador Caetano midi-coach to carry twenty-six passengers which was the maximum number that could be properly managed by a single driver-guide without damaging the personal approach.
