Tag Archives: travel

Protect and Survive in Scotland’s Secret Bunker

Travel, , ,

scotland's secret bunker

I started seeing road signs for Scotland’s Secret Bunker a few years ago now. They start appearing just after the Forth road bridge crossing as you head north. At first this did draw a wry smile to my face. After all a sign revealing the location of something supposed to be secret is wrong by definition.

But then one day for whatever reason I Googled it. An intriguing story then started to emerge. The bunker was built in the 1950s, at a time when the Cold War was beginning to frighten politicians and the major powers were beginning to stock pile an arsenal of nuclear weapons. If there had ever been a nuclear war, a select group of individuals, including I assume, some of the politicians responsible for starting the conflict would rush to the bunker.

There they would survive whilst millions could have died in fires of nuclear
holocaust.
The bunker is now a tourist attraction and so it crept onto my “must visit list”.

After a surprisingly long drive (which the signs at the Forth Bridge give no indication of) you arrive at an innocuous looking farmhouse sitting in the middle of a wind swept field near Anstruther. Under the farmhouse a little staircase takes you to a 150 yard long tunnel that slopes down into the bowels of the earth ending with a couple of huge metal blast doors.

This is real science fiction stuff. Beyond the blast doors are two storeys of living accommodation, telecommunications equipment, radar monitoring devices and air and water purification plants. All this is protected by ten feet of solid concrete strengthened by tungsten bars.

My first thought was how did they build it without anyone knowing? It’s like the villains in James Bond films that build impossibly large high tech bases hidden in volcanoes or under coral reefs. My second was that the technology, whilst obviously cutting edge in the 1970s and 1980s did look a little like a cheap 1970s Doctor Who set.

But as you explore this underground hideaway you slowly begin to realise what it was really all about. And when you sit in the cinema and watch the“Protect and Survive” public information films a feeling of dread takes hold. Those films, which fortunately were never broadcast, showed people like you and I how to turn their houses into nuclear fall out shelters. But as if a few doors propped up against a wall and covered with sand bags would have helped protect you from a force that would have flattened the house in an instant.

Scotland’s Secret Bunker is not, therefore, a fun day out. But it is a thought provoking reminder of a different time when the world was closer than it as ever been to mutually assured destruction. There is no roller coaster rush of excitement here, but it does leave similar sinking feeling in the stomach.

scotland's secret bunker

Five Star Luxury Hotel in Cologne with Kolsh Beer Nearby

Travel, , , , ,

hotel in cologne

The Excelsior Hotel Ernst in Cologne is a luxurious hotel, if a little old fashioned, with its wood panelling and mirrors, but the service and the attention to detail is spot on. Very smart and polite receptionists sign you in and escort you to your room. I loved the fact that the rooms have old fashioned keys with heavy metal fobs.

Spacious bedrooms with fluffy pillows and quilts welcome you with their comfort – and I had the added attraction of a room looking right out onto the stunning Cathedral across the street. And it wasn’t a problem being so close to the bells as the thick double glazing keeps all the noise out.

There is a mini bar in the room and it is free. Okay so all it has is a couple each of beer, coke, fruit juice and water but it is nice not to be faced with additional charges for this.

Breakfast is a combination of continental buffet and cooked to order hot items. I particularly enjoyed their eggs and bacon. And the grapefruit juice was so fresh and cold I had three glasses both mornings.

Only slight niggle was that the room was very warm. There was a portable air conditioning unit in the room but switching it on was like having a jet engine spooling up in your room. Impossible to use at night.

The hotel is close to the main station, the aforementioned Cathedral and many restaurants and Bauhauses. Check out Gaffel Am Dom next door where you order Kolsch beer in small glasses of only 0.2l. The bar staff will simply bring you a refill whenever your glass is empty.

This led quite quickly to the end of the session with a bill amounting to “Two Sausages and 12 Beers.”

Brand You – a Lesson from a Fleet of Lorries

Marketing, , , , , ,

Keeping kids amused on car journeys is much easier in the DVD/Blu Ray and Apple iPad/iPod world than it was years ago when you had to rely on puzzle books and games of Eye-Spy! But there is still one activity that transcends cutting edge technology and that is ‘Spot the Eddie Stobart Lorry’.

You cannot avoid them as you travel up and down the motorways of the UK. Striking red and green haulage trucks each resplendent with a woman’s name painted on the front. Every name you have ever heard of from Jayne to Amelia, taking in double barrels such as Leah Caitlyn and Laura Flora. Children can download a list of the names and check them off as the towns race by. You can see Paige near Preston and Martha Alice near Manchester.

Eddie Stobart has made transportation ‘spotting’ cool. No more hiding on station platforms or on fields near runways. You can ditch the anorak and tick your boxes with pride.

The brand is so recognisable that it has its own fan club and a range of toys and clothing. This is incredible when you realise that unlike other well known brands like Tesco or ASDA, Eddie Stobart is not providing a service to any of the people who love the brand so much. The majority of us do not buy anything from Stobart directly. The nearest we get is buying something off a supermarket shelf that might have been transported in a Stobart lorry. But the company has successfully created a brand that has weaved itself into the social consciousness of the UK population out of something as mundane as a haulage firm.

The lesson we can learn from Eddie Stobart is that, in corporate land, one way to build a successful brand is to give it a strong personality. And you cannot get more personal than humanising trucks with real women’s names.

Some of my fitness friends have recently been looking to market their services and skills to a wider audience and want to create a brand of their own. It sounds like a tall order and an expensive one but it needn’t be. This is where individuals have a unique advantage over companies.

As a PT or a Group Exercise instructor you already have a great personality. You project your personality to your individual customers and your class participants and you can use Facebook and Twitter to project that personality into the local community.From that beginning your brand will develop.

Companies often spend millions trying to create a personality for their brands. You already have one! You have the relatively easier task of turning that personality into a brand.

ScotRail’s poor service is like a comedy sketch

The Crazy World in which we Live, , , ,

As a result of working in marketing I can’t help but look at other company’s campaigns. I also take a keen interest in the customer service offered by my competitors and by those who are providing a service and product to me as an individual.

Sometimes all I can do is ask myself, “Why?”

Scotrail's poor service

For example did the marketing department genuinely think that the “More Than Freeman” campaign was a good idea, or did their ad agency win a £10 bet made in the pub before the pitch. Is the Go Compare Opera Singer meant to make people dive for the mute button, or compel people to stick their foot through the TV set in anger?

And are some of the things that ScotRail get up to as a result of unrivaled incompetence, or are they genuinely trying very hard to deliberately wind up their customers? Here is an example of ScotRail’s poor service.

There I was waiting for the busiest of the day’s trains from Edinburgh to Musselburgh (final destination North Berwick), and I was dismayed to see a puny two carriage train trundle onto a platform already overflowing with more than enough people to fill the usual four carriage unit.

The passengers half heartedly start to squeeze into the smaller train, whilst the cyclists look on in resigned despair. The guard then comes on in a surprisingly friendly (for ScotRail) voice to encourage us to, “Move down inside the coaches and let everyone on.”

Cue a bit more determined shuffling and I find my face getting very close to the armpit of the guy shoehorned in next to me on my left and the ponytail of the girl crammed in on my right.

Still friendly, but now a bit more insistent the guard then says, “Everyone, I really need you to try and move further into the train to let as many passengers as possible on board.” He obviously meant business so we all took a deeper breath and sucked in our abs and acted like sardines.

This still wasn’t enough for him. “Ladies and Gentlemen. Now there is not enough room for me. If I can’t get on board then, by law this train can’t go anywhere, so please squeeze up a little more so that I can get in.”

As I could not see anything but ponytail and armpit I wondered whether this guard was as fat as the Go Compare Opera Singer, but duly did as requested and found another inch of in-breathe.

All then seemed fine. The guard was successfully aboard. Now perhaps we could be on our way? There then followed one of those long periods ScotRail are famous for where nothing happens and no one tells you anything. After a good 10 minutes of increasingly sweaty confinement, the guard came back on the tannoy a little less cheerful than before to announce, “The train is now over laden, and I need to ask some of you to get off the train to make it lighter.”

Scotrail's poor service

Having already obliged by compacting themselves into an already tiny space most seemed unwilling, or more likely, unable to comply.

The guard’s final announcement would have made everyone laugh out loud if they had been able to exhale enough to do so. “Ladies and Gentlemen the train is so overcrowded that we have decided that it will now only go direct to North Berwick and will not stop at Musselburgh, Wallyford, Prestonpans, Longniddry and Drem. If you want to travel to one of these destinations please remove yourself from the train immediately.”

This was followed by quite painful and rather personal scenes as the passengers disentangled themselves from the contortions they had already been subjected to.

So were ScotRail rehearsing for a slot on next year’s Comic Relief. Or were they doing a live run through of an new ScotRail Comedy Sketch Show? There’s no point writing to their customer service department to ask. All you ever get from them are insincere stock answers and a £5 voucher as compensation for them failing to meet their 7 day complaint response service level agreement.

As genuine compensation for my inconvenience, I would like the Chief Executive of ScotRail to be forced to watch 48 hours of non-stop Go Compare Opera Singer with the mute and channel switches out of reach.

I am More Than Fuming-man. Thank you for listening!