Joan's latest book lifts the lid on her B&B life
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A GOOD B&B landlady has plenty to teach any top chef about making breakfasts, north Sutherland writer Joan Campbell once told Gordon Ramsay.
"It was at a reception at Buckingham Palace and I don’t think he was very amused," laughed Joan, who received an MBE in 2011 for her services to tourism and was the first Highlander and woman to receive the Silver Thistle Award.
Now Joan, who ran the five-star B&B The Shieling in Melvich for 40 years, shares more of her experiences and opinions from those days in her second entertaining book, Bye Bye B&B, which was launched at Waterstones in Inverness yesterday.
It is the follow-up to her 2009 book, Heads On Pillows, about the joys of running a Highland B&B.
Since retiring from the B&B, Joan continues to work with the Federation of Small Businesses and sits on the board of the Highlands and Islands Tourism Awards but has recently given up her commitments with VisitScotland and has finished helping to develop North Highland College UHI’s BA degree in Tourism and Hospitality.
She also wrote a regular column for the Groat’s sister title, The Northern Times, called "Tourism Matters".
Her first-ever book was published in 2007, a novel called The Land Beyond the Green Fields which featured the adventures of a group of cats living in the wild in Sutherland.
And it’s cats that Joan is turning to for her next challenge – as a hands-on volunteer for Cats Protection.
She said: "When I gave up my work with VisitScotland to work with rescuing feral cats, I said I thought cats would be easier to herd than people. But they’re not!
"When I retired, I originally hoped to concentrate on my writing. I have another book I’ve written about the interaction of my B&B guests and our animals but another writer has just come up with a very similar title, so I’ll have to think of a new one.
"I love writing but even now I don’t get enough time!"
