Yellow Badge Training – Rhona McCracken & Rowan Watkins

During the Easter holidays before our 6th year school exams, we had the opportunity to participate in the STGA’s Yellow Badge Tourist Guide training course. Our training for was sponsored by BID4Oban as part of its commitment to The Year of the Young Person. This was a unique and rewarding experience for us. It was far more challenging than we expected and gave us a real sense of achievement when we passed the exam. The course itself was an intensive 6-day training programme. We realised that we knew very little about the area we had grown up in; yet this opportunity pushed us to research Oban’s history, culture and stories in a way that we would not have been motivated to do otherwise. This aspect of the course was most rewarding as it sparked an interest in Scottish history and led us to carry out more research for our own general knowledge. As well as giving us a reason to read out of our normal areas of interest, the course really improved our confidence and public speaking skills; teaching us how to engage clients and tailor our talks to different audiences. As a result of passing the tourist-guiding exam, a practical walk where each guide spoke for several minutes, Rhona has used the experience and qualification to get a job as a tour guide at Dunollie museum as well as taking walking tours around Oban, with Oban Walking Tours.

We have recently taken American students on the Laurinburg exchange with Oban High School on one of the tours. The students really liked having guides close to their own age. We also think that having young tourist-guides, demonstrating a knowledge of the history and culture of their town, creates a great image for visitors.

In the future, we hope to run walking tours for a younger demographic, possibly working with Oban Backpackers and Youth Hostel to promote our tours and give young people something to do when visiting to the town. Rowan will be leaving town in September to study Social Sciences and Rhona Computer Science but will both be able to do tours in the holidays.