Macduff will be ablaze with a new set of Christmas lights this year, thanks to fundraising efforts by the Banff and Macduff Christmas Lights Association.

The lights in Banff and Macduff will be officially switched on at a ceremony on the Plainstones, on Low Street, Banff on the afternoon of Saturday November 27.

There will be stalls, Santa's grotto, horse and cart rides, Macduff RNLI, the coastguard and fire service. Music from the Banff Castle Pipe band, singers and a magician.

The event starts at 12.30pm, and the switch on is at 4.30pm.

Great news for the Banffshire Coast Tourism Partnership. Our new mobile website is now live on-line, and available to all who use their mobile phones to access the internet.

This is the future! It means that folk in their cars, or in the street can find out where to go, where to shop, where to eat, where to stay etc in our area, just with a few clicks on their mobiles.

The Banffshire Coast mobile website includes some minor mods to make it easier to use and to read on small  phone screens.

Thanks go to our IT gurus at blue square for creating it.

If you don’t have an internet enabled  phone, you can get a look at the mobile website on:  http://m.banffshirecoast.com/  To see how it actually  looks on a phone screen, make your viewing window much narrower. (Of course, it is much smaller on a phone too.)

Work is expected to start soon on a £162,000 development to expand the interior of the Boyndie Trust Visitor Centre.  The popular centre provides training for about 60 people who are either unemployed or have learning difficulties.  It also features a shop, cafe, garden centre and an exhibit on RAF Banff, and its popularity has meant that the work is necessary for it to continue to grow.  The work will be a revamp of the inside of the centre to provide visitors with better access to it.  It will include creating more retail space and training facilities, and it will mean people will get to see a lot more of the centre.  The car park will also be extended to create about 20 extra spaces.  And it is hoped that more work placements for training will be available.  All of the funding is now in place (including almost £70,000 from the rural Aberdeenshire LEADER fund, other grant awards and the Trust itself), and the work is expected to start very early in the year.