THE brooding ruins of Dunnottar Castle still lure visitors to an area which was once one of Scotland's most popular holiday destinations.

However, the area around Stonehaven on the north-east coast is experiencing a much wider revival in tourism.

So much so that visitors searching for a room in the town last week would have found the accommodation completely full.

Tourists started to flock to the seaside resort towards the end of the nineteenth century, but it was the building of an open-air pool in 1934 which really put it on the map.

The art deco pool acted like a magnet to Glasgow Fair holidaymakers and helped make it one of the top destinations from the 1930s through to the 1950s.

But the lure of European holiday resorts and the advent of the package holiday greatly affected the town 15 miles south of Aberdeen, and towards the end of the twentieth century the number of tourists declined.

As few as 13,500 visitors were being attracted to the council-owned pool each year, and in 1994 it was facing closure.

However, a group keen to save it gathered under the banner Friends of Stonehaven Pool and it is once again at the heart of the town's leisure activities. Now the tourist industry is thriving again, and the 1934-built heated swimming pool has been at the heart of the revival.

The facility has been fully renovated in art deco colours and many other improvements have led to numbers soaring to nearly 40,000, with floodlit midnight swimming, It's A Knockout-style competitions and aqua ceilidhs.

The key to Stonehaven's tourism regeneration has been community effort and the birth of an organisation called Stonehaven It's Special (SIS) to ensure there are wellorganised and well-publicised year-round attractions for visitors from the ancient Hogmanay fireballs ceremony through to next week's Harbour Hi-Jinks.

William Munro, Aberdeenshire Council's area manager for Kincardine and Mearns, said that Stonehaven is now as busy as it has ever been, with many people coming for short breaks.

"There is a lot to do by way of walking, wildlife, boat trips, Dunnottar Castle and the open-air pool. The pool was on the point of closing and I have absolutely no doubt that had the community not come forward and worked with us in the way they did it would have closed by now."

He added that the organisation raises funds to support the events, co-ordinates them and its tourism group plans the strategy for promoting the area.

"We are now looking at getting all the tourism-related businesses together to achieve quality standards, " he said. "I don't have figures to show what tourism is worth to the economy now as opposed to in the past but it is a very different tourism market and doing very well.

"The various guest houses and hotels are reporting they are pretty well booked up. The harbour is probably as attractive a setting as you will find anywhere in the world and the Ship's Inn's owner has just reported a record sale of 3500 pints in one week during the folk festival.

"Predominantly people having short breaks are from not so far away but tourists from all over Europe were interviewed in a survey carried out in the town recently."

Trudy Clayton, who chairs the SIS executive and is active in organising the town's folk festival, said: "Last weekend, when the folk festival was on, people were phoning because they couldn't get a room anywhere.

"We have nine major events throughout the year and the organisers of them all work together. We have one person who finds sponsorship for all the events and sells advertising but he does not get paid and it is done on a percentage basis.

"The tourism group work together to think up ideas of how to bring people into the town and that has been so successful other towns are now looking at how we have done it. The pool is a great success and a wonderful example of the community linking with council.

"More and more visitors are coming for long weekends, particularly when there are events on in Stonehaven.

Others are basing themselves here to tour and see other parts of Aberdeenshire and the caravan site has been busier than for a number of years."

GROWTH AREA

Largest town in Kincardine and Mearns: population 10,460 Main employment sectors by percentage of workers Public sector 40.3% Distribution/Hotels/Restaurants 23.5% Insurance/Finance etc 11.4% Unemployment 1.5%

Work location of residents Aberdeen 45%, Stonehaven 37%, Offshore 12% and Elsewhere 6%

Major events: Stonehaven Feein' market, pool opening and RW Thomson rally June Folk festival and Highland games July Harbour Hi-Jinks and MRI Harbour festival August Fireworks display November Open Air in the Square and Fireball festival December