In addition to being Councillor for Blairgowrie & the Glens and involved in a host of other organisations and projects that promote outdoor activities and sports, Bob Ellis has played a key role in the story of the Cateran Trail. In this post he told Clare Cooper how it all began and why it holds such a special place in his heart.

Bob wearing Ashleigh Slater’s Berries & Cherries tartan at its launch in 2015, Photo, Clare Cooper

Bob, you were one of the Founders of the Cateran Trail, can you tell us how it all started?

I was approached by a chap called Alan Dick in the summer of 1999, who had the idea of a long distance circular trail around East Perthshire. He was told that I was an authority on all local paths!

We poured over various maps and came up with a route. We then set out together, Alan driving his car and me running with a Dictaphone describing the route and what had to be done on it. Once this was done, we both approached all of the landowners, around 40 of them with a basic agreement form. I also contacted Perth & Kinross Countryside Trust of which I was a Trustee with a view to them looking at the prospect of overseeing the Trail, putting together a funding package and agreements with the landowners. It was then that we all came up with the name “The Cateran Trail” named after the infamous highland brigands who went about rustling cattle.

The Trail was properly way marked and opened and launched by John Swinney MP in the year 2000. One of the visions that we had was to boost the economy of all of those villages, B&B’s and other attractions on or just off the Trail.

You’ve also been on the Steering Group for the Cateran’s Common Wealth initiative right from the start – what excites you about it’s vision and what do you hope its impact will be locally, nationally and internationally?

It was an honour and still is an honour to be asked to come onto the Steering Group of the Cateran’s Common Wealth initiative right from the start. Anything at all that helped promote not just the Cateran Trail but also what we have in East Perthshire and West Angus in the way of all aspects of culture and adventure.

My vision would be that this project when up and running attracts locals and visitors alike from all over the world regardless of age, ability and profession to come and see what is on offer in this somewhat forgotten part of Perthshire. We get people from all over the world walking the Cateran Trail from South America to New Zealand and in between, we have written evidence of this because people sign the visitor’s book in the Upper Lunch Hut which is a feature on the Trail and a welcome refuge in inclement weather. The Hut lies around 4 miles north of the hamlet of Enochdhu.

We get around 8,000 walkers a year on the Trail and this figure is rising year on year, I see this figure rising even more as we attract the more cultural people who will come and look at the cultural history and scenery, which lies on and around the Trail.

There is so much work that has already been put into this project by its’ founder, Clare Cooper and from the word go, her own visions have attracted enthusiasm from other recruited members of the Steering Group and there is an eagerness from us all to conquer any obstructions put in our way and I suppose that is a vision from us all.

We’ve lost touch a bit with this notion of ‘common wealth’ – the things that belong to all of us – yet the Cateran Trail area has an abundance of it, from its spectacular landscapes, to its history and heritage, from its contemporary arts and culture to its strong sense of community, what aspects of that common wealth do you find yourself connecting with most and why?

My connections with the Trail are easy. I may say that it is my baby and it has realised all that I wanted it to do. It has boosted the economy throughout all of the land that the Trail passes through. It has brought communities together. People are making friends with each other. But I suppose the main thing would be that I have come to realise that others are coming up with their own pet projects and they are proving successful, like the Eco Camp at Blackwater, the Community Shop in Kirkmichael is doing really well, Clare’s Cateran Common Wealth project has been born out of it. Seriously, I could connect with a whole amount of things, people, places and projects.

If you could only visit one spot on the Cateran Trail, where would it be?

I could say that my favourite spot is the whole of the Trail but being put on the spot, I would have to say the top of the hill overlooking Auchentaple Loch is the bit that I could sit at all day and night and just lose myself (with a bottle of a good malt of course).

Blairgowrie, the largest town on the Cateran Trail, is the source of a great treasure of cultural ‘common wealth’ – The Laing Photographic Collection.

15,000 images taken between 1927 and 1993 from the business of D. Wilson Laing Photographers, Blairgowrie, was acquired by Perth Museum in 1997 and is the subject of an exhibition ‘A Laing Exposure’ at Alyth Museum.  You can watch this fabulous short introduction to the collection below:

When it was collected in 2008, the collection was divided between Perth Museum & Art Gallery, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments Scotland and National Museums, Scotland. Perth Museum selected about 15,000 images and collected the eleven original photographer’s ledgers together with prints and other objects. Most of the plates collected by Perth Museum & Art Gallery are of places in East Perthshire and were either commissioned by the public or local businesses or produced for the press by the Laings.

But Laings were also employed to document important national projects such as the building of the Forth and Tay Road Bridges and the construction of hydroelectric schemes. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments, Scotland collected this contract work. National Museums, Scotland then selected material of particular relevance for the rest of Scotland.

Laings finally closed on 5 July, 1993 when David Constable Laing (David Mitchell Laing’s grandson) and his wife Dorothy retired.

We hope you enjoy the film!

We were lucky enough to have sustainable design luminary John Thackara visit with us in July to begin talking about how, with his help, we might use design thinking and design expertise to realise our ambitions for Cateran’s Common Wealth.

John Thackara with Marian Bruce, Sandra Wilson, Chris Lim and Andrew Barrie (and Hamish the dog) on Alyth Hill, Photo, Clare Cooper

In addition to showing him around the Cateran Trail and introducing him to some of our key partners, Clare Cooper took the opportunity to interview him about the concept of the commons and its importance.

John, why do you think so much attention is being paid to the notion of  ‘the commons’ right now?

The commons is an idea, and a practice, that generates meaning and hope. Millions of people are busy working on projects that aim to meet the practical needs of people struggling to navigate these precarious times, projects that are focusing on promoting social, environmental and economic changes that will help create a more liveable world – but a lot of this work feels fragmented. We’ve been lacking an umbrella concept, a coordinating idea, to make sense of the work we do as individuals in the swarm. The Commons is that umbrella idea. Commoning gives shared meaning to the emerging ‘leave things better’ politics that otherwise lacks a name. It’s the opposite of the drive to turn everything into money,

Do you have your own favourite definition of ‘common wealth’?

I’m nervous of definitions; they cause endless disputes and also tend to freeze an idea in time. But I like the way Silke Helfrich talks about the commons as “all the things that we inherit from past generations that enable our livelihoods’. Seen through that lens, the commons can include land, watersheds, biodiversity, common knowledge, software, skills, or public buildings and spaces. The important thing is that the commons are a form of wealth that a community looks after, through the generations. The idea embodies a commitment to ‘leave things better’ rather than extract value from them as quickly as possible. They are the opposite of the impulse to monetise everything. And because the commons, as an idea, affirms our codependency with living systems and the biosphere, it also represents the new politics we’ve all been looking for to replace the industrial growth economy we have now. 

None of this is new, by the way. The commons goes back an awfully long way. It describes the way communities managed shared land in Medieval Europe – but earlier history, too, is filled with examples of communities managing common resources sustainably. Examples of water being shared as a commons date back 8,000 years.

When you spoke in Scotland last year (2013) you said that you believed that the arts had a transformative role, especially now, given the enormous challenges we face around climate change, resource scarcity and social injustice – can you expand a bit on that belief?


Twenty years ago, Susan Sontag posed a tricky question: “Why is it that, even when we are  exposed to  shocking stories and images, nothing seems to change?” Sontag was writing about war photography, but her words apply equally to environmental communications. We’ve been exposed, for 30 years, to a stream of shocking maps, images, and visualizations – ‘doomer porn’, as some call it. But passively watching this gloomy news has produced more guilt and denial than transformational change. What we need are positive triggers that reawaken a joyful sense of being at home in the natural world. This is where art and storytelling come in. They can tweak our interest, redirect our attention, and start conversations in ways that hectoring communications never do. As you’ve reminded us, Clare, Marcel Poust memorably said “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes”.

Do rural communities have a special role in helping all of us respond to these challenges?

Rural communities have an important role to play in many ways. One that I am particularly interested in is how they can act as hosts of new kinds of ‘active travel’ – from Wwoofing to Fibershedding – that involve an exchange of value, not just the purchase of a package. Making new connections between cities and their surrounding rural areas, and bringing in new internet platforms and Peer-To-Peer business models, combines tourism development with creative place making. New forms of guided tour and learning journeys are emerging that take people to novel destinations that are only now being described: watersheds, bioregions, ecomuseums, food routes, industrial heritage sites. I’m not just talking about recuperative weekend trips to nature, here: People are looking for activities that contribute in a tangible way. This trend is enabled by new business models such as Peer-2-Peer travel and the sharing economy. Think AirBNB: it didn’t exist a few years ago but is now the world’s largest hotel.

Our Cateran’s Common Wealth project is just beginning. When you visited with us in July (2014) what struck you most about what you saw and experienced in relation to what we want to try and achieve?



Many of the ingredients are already present: Buildings, biodiversity, landscapes – and above all, passionate, knowledgeable and committed people. It’s a lot of fun here! The next phase is to explore ways to connect and leverage these individual assets in ways that help them do better. In this, we’re pushing on an open door: there’s a growing demand for forest awareness, ecological camping, biodiversity trails and suchlike. I’m super-confident the project can act as a catalyst that inspires residents and visitors alike to revalue our ‘common wealth’.

Are other communities around the world trying to do something similar to us?

I have collected dozens of examples! In Slovenia, I met some bee fanatics who’ve adapted their ancient tradition of Pilgrim Tours to create hiking routes that take people to centres of Slovene apiculture: mead breweries, gingerbread workshops, apitherapy clinics.  On the Andaman Islands, in Thailand, guests spend time replanting mangrove forests.  In Rajasthan, the Arna-Jharna Museum, founded by one of India’s leading folklorists and oral historians, celebrates the open spaces of the desert, including its flora and fauna, as part of a larger holistic exploration of the museum as a place of learning.

We’re planning to deepen our work with you in the near future, can you explain what you are going to try and help us do?

My main contribution is threefold. First, I’ll be a kind of talent-scout who turns up in town and celebrates the unique but neglected assets that are easy for local people to take for granted. To this end, I’ll be chivvying you to make short films and paper artefacts that enable others to learn about the potential of the area. My second input will be to help you turn “would-be-nice” ideas into service prototypes that can be the basis of sustainable livelihoods in the longer term. My third contribution will be to connect you with innovators in other places who will be keen to share knowledge and experiences.

Thanks John! Looking forward to working with you and your network very much in the coming months.

(We’ll be running two Innovation Labs with John later in the autumn of 2014 which we hope will help us start thinking very creatively about the kinds of impact we want Cateran’s Common Wealth to have and we’ll be publicising those very soon on the Events page.)