Well at last, we have made it, Castle Loch and Lochfield Cottage belong to the communities of the Royal Burgh of Lochmaben, the Royal Four Towns and Templand. The care and development of the Castle Loch is in the hands of the members of the Castle Loch Lochmaben Community Trust. We have 268 members of the Trust which will hold its first Annual General Meeting at 7pm on Tuesday 25th March 2014 in the Lochmaben Church Hall. We will have reports of where we have got to so far with the pathway and development of the cottage. We will elect our first ten Trustees to take the work of the Trust forward. In the meantime the Steering Committee will interview and appoint a Project Development Manager and get the developments moving forward. We need to move on fairly quickly as some of our funding is time bound. We will hopefully have a logo by the AGM as our nursery and primary children are currently working on ideas. Castle Loch Fishery will continue to manage the fishing until March 2015. The lease of the fishing rights will be advertised early in 2015. Once again we must thank those organisations who have made this possible: the Scottish Land Fund, Dumfries and Galloway Area Committee for Annandale and Eskdale, Magnox Socio-economic Fund, Lochmaben & District Initiative, Annandale Sailing Club, Jaybees Nursery and several personal donations from Trust members. The Rural LEADER Programme are to provide a substantial grant towards the pathway works. Here’s hoping for a period of quiet and reasonable weather so that we can get on with things! Any friends who are interested in becoming involved and who live in one of  the three communities may apply  for membership of the Trust and Membership Forms can be obtained from the Trust website http://www.castleloch.org.uk  the Lochmaben Community website http://www.lochmaben.org.uk  or  the Lochmaben Post Office