Barnton Bunker Goes to the Scottish Tourism Oscars aka The Scottish Thistle Awards

Last week, Barnton Bunker got dressed up! A team from the Bunker including volunteers headed into Edinburgh city centre to attend the Scottish Thistle Awards in association with Abbey, The Destination Experts, after being shortlisted for the Best Community Tourism and Events Initiative.

We arrived feeling a mixture of excitement, nerves and just a little bit of intimidation! The venue was the beautiful Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh.

There we were, Barnton Bunker, a grassroots, volunteer-led charity working to preserve a remarkable piece of Edinburgh's Cold War history, rebuild our museum and ultimately achieve museum status, while developing a programme of events and experiences that bring the bunker back to life and serve the local community well.

Seeing our name alongside some of the biggest tourism and events organisations in Scotland was quite a moment.

Bunker Volunteers on stage after the event.

From the Bunker to the Thistle Awards

Volunteers in the Bunker Tunnel, later at the event.

The Scottish Thistle Awards are often described as the Oscars of Scottish tourism, celebrating the people, businesses and organisations helping make Scotland one of the world's most memorable destinations.

Our category, Best Community Tourism & Events Initiative, was an honour to be counted in. We went up against The Enchanted Forest and Heartland Festival.

Among the names and organisations represented were some of the biggest and best-known tourism experiences in the country, including Edinburgh's Hogmanay, Edinburgh Zoo and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Being shortlisted for the first time was something we were incredibly proud of. It was also a reminder of just how far Barnton Bunker has come! To have that work recognised alongside some of Scotland's most established tourism and events initiatives was something we'll remember.

We didn't win, and that's OK!

Winners of our category: The Enchanted Forest

Our category was won by another fantastic initiative, The Enchanted Forest, so we didn't take home the trophy this time. But some of our team still headed up onto the stage afterwards because being shortlisted matters to us!

This was the first time Barnton Bunker had ever been nominated for a Scottish Thistle Award. For a project like ours, that feels like a pretty big deal. We're not a huge tourism organisation with a massive team behind us, we're a community project, a charity. Our professional tours only started running last year.

We're volunteers, trustees and people who have decided that this fascinating piece of Edinburgh's history is worth saving, and worth sharing.

We're not finished yet!

If anything, it has made us even more determined. We're already thinking about next year's awards.

By then, we want Barnton Bunker to have even more stories to tell, more events to offer, more tours for visitors to experience and even more reasons for people to discover what lies beneath an ordinary looking hill in north-west Edinburgh.

We're continuing to work towards our vision for the bunker as a museum and visitor attraction, while developing the events programme that has become such an important part of what we do.

So, perhaps this wasn't our year for the trophy, but it was our year to walk into the room. Our year to see Barnton Bunker sitting alongside some of the biggest names in Scottish tourism, and we realised that this little grassroots project has a place in that huge conversation!

For now, we're just incredibly proud.

Thank you to everyone who has volunteered, supported, visited, donated, attended an event, shared a post, told someone about us or helped us get Barnton Bunker to this point.

This one is for all of you. ☢️