Life After GLAD
Or what to expect from your next visit to Dunollie Museum, Castle and Grounds
What is GLAD?
GLAD stands for the Dunollie Garden Links and Digital project, which we undertook thanks to a recovery fund from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for Scotland. It was a huge part of our life at Dunollie for 12 months starting in March 2022. To find out more about the project, and all the activities which took place as part of it, have a look at our website (click here).
Now that the Dunollie GLAD project has come to an end, and as we enter a new open season, we are excited to share all the improvements and changes to our site with all of you. Whilst most of our activities took place during the project itself, much is left to show for it now and hopefully for many more years.
Thanks to this project we have two new trails through our grounds which should greatly impact the visitor experience. The first of these, Dunollie’s Mythical Creatures QR trail, has been up and running since the summer of 2022 and has been a huge success ever since. Aimed at children aged 3-12, it promotes outdoor learning and fosters curiosity and creativity by providing a journey of discovery through our enchanting woodland grounds in a quest for QR codes and mythical creatures of Scottish folklore hiding in the surrounding landscapes. All our visitors are welcome to scan the QR codes as they go along but the full experience comes with a beautiful map, stickers and a special prize for just an extra £3 per child.
To find out more about this activity, click on the button below.
Our second trail is being launched for the first time in April 2023. This time aimed at adults, Dunollie’s Garden Trail is made of beautiful pull-up signs throughout the areas of site not covered by our Guided Tours and provides insightful information about the grounds and Dunollie’s history written both in English and Scottish Gaelic and including QR codes for additional information. To give the time to adults visiting with children to read and immerse themselves in this new trail, we have created a new Dunollie Explorer's Trail by including a brass rubbings on each post for children to find and colour in independently, thus proving their parents have successfully found each sign of the adult trail and successfully completed it.
To find out more about children’s activities and visiting Dunollie as a family, click on the button below.
As part of the Dunollie GLAD project, we were able to build a whole new, wheelchair-accessible path through the shrubbery which offers a beautiful new angle through which to explore Dunollie’s Historic Woodland Grounds.
We also have new planters, plants as well as a welcome archway with an improved map of our site to help visitors take in their surroundings upon arrival.
As well as a second archway along the castle path in honour of our New Routes Health and Wellbeing Group and all the work they have done for Dunollie over the last few years.
We are very pleased to have a new sheltered outdoor space in the World of Trees, which we plan to use for events and outdoor learning activities throughout the year.
Finally, the Dunollie GLAD Project has also left us with a new greenhouse, home to many exciting and ambituous projects. Most notably, we plan to keep fostering our close ties with Oban High School and welcome High School Gardening Groups to use our greenhouse space to learn and grow organic vegetables to fit into our Kettle Garden Café’s new seasonal menus.
To find out more about the Kettle Garden Café and its menu, click on the button below:
Many thanks to national lottery players for helping us make this project a reality.
If you are reading this and have already visited Dunollie Museum, Castle and Grounds during the 2023 season, we would love to hear from you. If you have any feedback, please let us know by emailing info@dunollie.org or by clicking on the button below:
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