Ruth Wishart on the kind of tourists we can well do without

On the other hand the residents of those destinations could cheerfully strangle some of their temporary visitors.

Most especially they, and sundry other spots like Dublin and the Baltic States, would greatly appreciate hen and stag parties finding different destinations in which to get pie-eyed and behave badly.

Your own heart sinks at the airport as you spot a gaggle of women at the airport sporting T-shirts with cheesy messages and cowboy hats, and realise that you and they will be sharing a metal cigar tube for the next three hours or so.

Stag parties are less easy to see in advance, but all too easy to find when a posse of them sway drunkenly towards you whilst the locals stay behind closed doors, praying for speedy deliverance.

As some of the massed ranks of protesters explained as they marched in Palma over the annual invasions, it is not the height of their employment ambition to wait tables for sloshed foreign diners.

Venice and the Scottish northern islands have a different order of problems as they play serial host to cruise liners who tie up before disgorging thousands of tourists, who may buy the odd knick-knack but are far too well fed and watered on board to darken the doors of local restaurants.

“One did once buy a scone," a rueful Shetlander confided to me.

Hilariously, those of us who have travelled hither and yon like to pretend we aren’t tourists, but some sort of superior breed seeking exposure to other cultures. Aye right!

Kirroughtree in the Galloway Forest Park, which could become part of Scotland's third National Park. (Image: GSAB (TF))

If Scotland finally gets a third national park, and Galloway seems to have been selected in advance of a consultation with the natives of that delightful corner, they would do well to learn from the experience of other favoured spots.

Folk in the Cairngorms endlessly complain about the erosion of favourite hiking paths, whilst closer to home the Loch Lomond and Trossachs variety can’t abide wild campers who leave rubbish, and worse, at non designated sites.

Not even to mention the ongoing stushie about whether Flamingo Land will be allowed to build its own pleasure park beside Balloch. That particular saga is due to be resolved in mid September and has already attracted record numbers of objectors.

I’ve always thought of Dumfries and Galloway as one entity, rather than just the latter, but it’s a bonny and unspoiled neck of the woods which might well benefit from a much higher profile.

Every year its prodigious community of creatives open their studio doors for a long weekend in May, a venture which definitely does encourage random retail therapy. (As anyone who has seen my crowded walls can attest.)

Paintings are my particular weakness, but there’s everything on sale from cleverly woven willows to a huge amount of jewellery.

“We mustn’t start buying at the first pit stop”, I lectured my travelling companion. Still wearing the earrings. (Well they went so well with the necklace found the previous year.)

A whim of iron, that’s me.