Fort Bill Blows Its Own Trumpet

You can expect the outdoors paradise that is Fort William to have a higher profile in future thanks to the launch of a new inititative by local businesses.

The Outdoors Capital of the UK is going to launch as a brand next Thursday complete with a new web site aimed at promoting the Fort William and Lochaber area and complete with latest news, images of the area, an accommodation search, video clips and more.

As anyone who's been to the area will know, it boasts some of the best mountain scenery and mountaineering in the UK, including Ben Nevis obviously, but there's a lot more there too.

The world's largest indoor ice wall is located at the Ice Factor in Kinlochleven, the UK round of the mountain bike world cup takes place at Fort William as does the arduous Wilderness Arc adventure race, and there are great opportiunities for sports like caving and kayaking.

It's great to see this fantastic area taking the initiative and bigging itself up - one of the few independently created tourism initiatives in the UK. Apparently while many outdoors people are well aware of the attractions there, a good few aren't.

Local businessman and non-executive Director Steve Ham explains, 'It was a puzzle to work out why so few people knew how fantastic this area is and we did a lot of research to find the right answers, comparing ourselves to great destinations in France, Canada and New Zealand and looking at what we could do here. Now I think we've cracked it.'

More at www.outdoorcapital.co.uk