Think Burning Man gets bad traffic? Scotland’s formerly secluded Fairy Pools have become marred by apocalyptic congestion with tourists waiting in four-hour traffic jams to visit them, according to local tour companies.
“The people who work in the Fairy Pools car park have said visitors say it’s like a warzone driving there,” Gordon Pearson, who runs the tour company WOW Scotland, told South West News Service. “It’s absolutely horrendous, and I don’t think there’s enough attention to how bad the road really is.”
Located in Glen Brittle on the Isle of Skye, the attraction comprises a series of picturesque pools and waterfalls that look as if they’ve come straight out of a “Lord of the Rings” movie.
While the sapphire oasis was once a hidden gem, traffic has increased dramatically over the past decade, according to local sources, with congestion allegedly exacerbated by poor infrastructure.
Over the past few weeks, traveling there has become “total chaos” with as many as 400 vehicles stuck on the road, per Pearson.
While just 200,000 tourists visit the locale each year, the one-lane road out of Glen Brittle is poorly maintained, leading to scads of flat tires and to hourslong traffic jams like something out of a disaster thriller, reported SWNS.
“Some people can get stuck for about four hours just on that road,” lamented Pearson, who regularly has to jump out and help facilitate traffic.
Conditions at the now-literal tourist trap have been exacerbated by wet weather of late.
That has caused vehicles to get stranded on the shoulders where rescue vehicles can’t reach them due to the bottlenecks.
“If one of my customers needed emergency help, there’s no way of getting help to them quickly,” said Pearson.
Conditions have gotten so “dangerous” that the guide is contemplating taking the resplendent mecca off his tour.
“We’ve always done Skye, since 2012,” he said. “It’s our unique selling point, and we always want people to get the most out of the place, but we can’t do that with the current situation.
“We might pull out of doing the Fairy Pools on our route, and maybe Skye altogether,” he added.
There’s a bureaucratic bottleneck as well.
The Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland charity, which set up a car park six years ago to relieve congestion along the route, has been blamed for the traffic by the local council.
OATS has also been told to cough up the money to repair the hazardous access road — something it cannot do by law, according to a rep for the organization.
“Council officers are working on potential visitor management solutions and exploring funding streams to help alleviate some of these pressures which are currently being experienced in the Skye area,” the Highland Council spokesperson said.
