Planners have given the go-ahead to a scheme to turn a disused quarry 16km outside Edinburgh into a "surf park" – with the help of a mechanical wave-maker.
Wavegarden Scotland proposed the project for Craigpark Quarry near the village of Ratho in February 2017.
Alongside the pool, the development will include a surf school, guest lodges, "glamping pods", an abseiling line, a water tubing area, a BMX track, a snow-sports training jump and retail units.
The project was masterplanned and designed by landscape architect Harrison Stevens, with Canada’s WSP acting as the engineering consultant and Colliers International as planning consultant.
The project is expected to cost around £15m ($21m) and will follow on from the success of Wavegarden’s Surf Snowdonia, which was announced in May 2014, and which attracted 155,000 visitors last year.
Andy Hadden, the co-founder of Tartan Leisure, the company that is developing Wavegarden Scotland, said: "We expect the project to create up to 130 jobs and generate up to £11m for the local economy every year."
Mark Boyd, captain of Scotland’s national surfing team, said: "With surfing making its debut as an Olympic Sport at Tokyo 2020, Wavegarden Scotland will play a key role in encouraging and developing future Scottish surfers and putting this fantastic sport in the spotlight."
Images courtesy of Wavegarden Scotland
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With A Major Tourist destination at Edinburgh, this facility appears to have every thing going for it, ie. the developer, the construction industry, the local community and the jobscene, and it will make use of a disused quarry that would otherwise have probably lain derelict for years to come, we should encourage more of this type of imaginative use of redundant sites especially where communities need support.