Olympic torch hope for Scots up in flames

THE route the Olympic torch will take on its 70-day journey across the UK has been unveiled, but large swathes of Scotland will miss out.

A corner of the North-east of Scotland will be unable to catch a glimpse of the flame, including Nairn, Banff and Fraserburgh.

And a large part of the west coast of Scotland will also miss out as the torch is carried from Fort William to Inverness, avoiding towns such as Oban, Mallaig and Ullapool.

The torch starts its time in Scotland when it arrives in Stranraer from Northern Ireland on 8 June. From there it will travel north, passing through Ayr and up to Glasgow.

It then carries on up through Glencoe to Fort William before swinging across to Inverness. People living on the islands of Orkney and Lewis will have a chance to see the flame close-up before it is taken back to the mainland, passing through a host of towns on its way through Aberdeen, Perth, Dundee, St Andrews, Dunblane, Stirling and Edinburgh.

The last leg of the journey will see torch-bearers carry the torch through south-east Scotland before crossing the Border to England. After that, it will tour the length and breadth of England before heading along the River Thames to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony on 27 July.

Organisers say the flame will travel through 1,018 villages, towns and cities and be within an hour’s journey of 95 per cent of the UK population.

London 2012 chairman Lord Coe has urged the British public to get behind the Olympic torch relay in the same spirit in which they got behind the royal wedding. Communities will be given ideas on how to celebrate and, in a separate initiative called “Get Set”, school pupils will learn about the torch, its history and how to plan a local welcome for the torch bearers.

Lord Coe denied the route had been designed to take in such a large number of places in order to compensate all those who had missed out on tickets to any of the Olympic events.

“It was designed to get to as many people as we possibly could,” he said.

Security around the torch relay will be tight, with an 11-strong convoy of vehicles likely to accompany it on its journey.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is working closely with the Metropolitan Police on security issues and local police forces around the country will also be involved.

“There will be concerns for the field of play and the moment-by-moment journey that the flame actually makes,” Lord Coe said.

But he was confident the “right balance” would be struck and the policing operation around the event would be “classically proportionate”, he added.

And he was also confident the flame would continue to burn throughout: “We’ve done a lot of testing on the flame.”