Belladrum apologises for hours-long traffic delays

The queue on Thursday night near Belladrum

Organisers of the Highlands' biggest music festival have apologised for long waits to get into the site.

Some people have told of traffic delays of five hours or more to travel the last few miles to get to the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, near Beauly.

Organisers said they were disappointed by the traffic issues, which had also affected local communities.

Belladrum said its best-ever sale of 25,000 tickets was a "very small percentage" increase on last year.

• Loyal fans help music festival through tough times

Music fans who did make it in on time to see Thursday's headliner - Norwegian singer-songwriter Sigrid - praised the performance and new main stage set-up.

The Hot House stage, which is set in a natural bowl in a field, is now the main venue instead of the Garden Stage, where numbers were sometimes restricted due to the area being a former walled garden.

Organisers said wet weather and large numbers of people arriving early had resulted in the long queues of traffic.

They said they would seek to avoid a similar situation next year, Belladrum's 20th birthday year.

The festival site on the Belladrum Estate is about a 30-minute drive from Inverness.

On social media, people said they had waited for five hours and even longer to reach car parks, or to drop off family members.

A police officer on a motorbike patrolled the queue on Thursday evening, before escorting an ambulance from the line.

Some drivers turned around in the road and headed back in the opposite direction, while some festival-goers set off to walk to the site - something Belladrum's organisers urged people not to do for safety reasons.

Belladrum's organisers said: "We are incredibly disappointed by the traffic issues that so many festival-goers and local people experienced today.

"We have used the same routes, the same traffic management and parking companies and the same number of police officers in the same locations.

"We had a very large number of people arrive early and we believe that this, along with the wet weather this morning, was the cause of the long queues which then continued throughout the day."

Other acts over the weekend include British indie pop band Bastille and Scottish rock band Travis who will play the main stage on Saturday night.