Anne McCall writes:
Well, day one and the circus came to town. Pros (men in suits) and antis (ladies in hand painted T-shirts) politely protested outside. The public were probably outnumbered by the media especially as they scrambled to catch the first witness - a representative of Trump International Golf Links Scotland - looking solemn on his way into the conference centre.
But even then the gigantic hall set aside was about ten times as big as needed. This proposal attracts attention, but this is still a Public Local Inquiry into a planning application, not Elvis or even Andy Stewart. A smaller room will do just fine but it's nice that someone took the time to organise a stadium capacity facility had it been needed.
What did we learn? That Mr Trump hasn't read the TIGLs environmental statement. Nothing wrong with that, he's a busy man and it's a technical document. But he hasn't even read the 5 page non technical summary.
He bought the site without ever having visited it, and he didn't know part of it was a SSSI until after he'd bought it. But our advocate David Tyldesley had a good day teasing out these nuggets, which was recognised in the BBC coverage.
All in all, we saw pretty much what we've seen before - Mr Trump has a desire to achieve what he says is his dream to create a world class golf course. It's just that his objective could be achieved without destroying our environment.
Colleagues spent their time doing endless interviews outside the hall throughout a long day, and we shall question Trump's golfcourse desinger, Martin Hawtree, first thing tomorrow - when most of the media will have departed I guess. Mr Trump went to catch his plane, and I'm unlikely to bump into him in the lobby of the hotel I'll be staying in for the next four weeks.