Scotland Travel Blog January 10

"2010 Just Got Even Better!"

Happy New Year!

We've been working solidly over the Christmas / New Year Holidays on a major updating of our itineraries with lots of new route options, day trip choices for longer stopover stays and some great new deals for saving money.

Our BIG NEWS is that we have made an arrangement with Arnold Clark Car Rental so that anyone buying our guides will get a 10% Discount on their Car Hire.

It's a really simple deal. You get a promotional code when you buy one of the Tour Itineraries and you enter this code when you book your car at the Arnold Clark website. Voila!!!... you save 10% on the cost of your hire car.

Best of all, this saving means that your Secret Scotland Guide is effectively FREE!!!!

Now I know that I'm selling this hard, but how good a deal can you get?

So here comes the thing that puzzles us, since launching the discount on car hire our sales have dropped!?!?!

Is it just that the deal seems too good to be true. Should we be charging people more money for the guides. Do people think that there is a catch? Please send us an email and tell us what you think because we're confused.

Anyway, we weren't totally confined to the office and we did manage a few days out, armed with our Christmas sale purchase of a Blackberry. Ah yes, Secret Scotland has gone all high-tech and now we can receive emails (reception permitting) wherever we go. Replying to them isn't so easy as the keyboard is so damn small and it takes a lot of patience.

And now for something more interesting... Whilst out and about in January, we passed through Connel at a time when the tidal conditions were pretty good for seeing the "Falls of Lora". At peak times, there can be a height difference of over 1 metre between sea level and the water level in Loch Etive. The cascade effect is created when the water in this sea loch tries to flow out with the falling tide. There is an underwater ridge at the mouth of Loch Etive that acts as a sort of weir, thereby impeding the rate of flow of water out of the Loch.

If you look carefully at the base of the bridge, you can see a canoeist paddling upstream against the cascade.