The creation of access rights under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 did not remove restrictions on access made under other legislation. Some of those legal restrictions apply to land more or less permanently, such as those applying to working quarries, but some are more temporary. For example, under the Fire and Rescue Services Act…
I went to have a look at the southern edge of the area affected by the Abernethy/Glenmore wildfire on 23rd August, about five weeks after the fire started and two weeks after Glenmore had been re-opened on 7th August (see here for timeline from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service). All the photos in this…
A late postcard – I am back in Scotland! The most obvious impact of global warming in the Alps has been the retreat of the glaciers. At the end of the 19th Century the glacier on Triglav covered over 40 hectares. By 2019 it had shrunk to 1 ha and by 2022 was no longer…
I had wanted to climb Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia, ever since meeting some Slovenian climbers on a Mountaineering Council of Scotland meet many years ago. My interest was fanned by Mike Newbury, a stalwart of MCifS’ access and conservation committee, who went on holiday to Slovenia each year and whose privately published guide…
UPDATE (24th August) Copernicus satellite imagery flown on 21/08/2026 gives a cloud free view of the north-east corner of the area burnt in Abernethy Forest. I have therefore been able to revise the maps of the Abernethy – Glenmore wildfire, and have added updated maps to the Google Drive folder (link in blog…
Walking up through the forest to our first hut below Debela Pec we had little idea if it’s extent until altitude started to stunt tree growth. Prompted by the Glenmore fire and Victor Clements post (see here) I wondered what would happen if a wildfire became established in a forest of this size and if it…
An RSPB newsletter I read before leaving Scotland for Slovenia, referred to capercaillie as birds of the Caledonian pine forest. This may now be the case in Scotland but wasn’t always so, as when capercaillie inhabited the mixed woodland on the Loch Lomond islands. Capercaillie, while mainly found in the boreal zone, are also distributed…
My original plan for this summer was to start walking the Via Alpina, which traverses the arc if the Alps from Trieste to Nice or thereabouts. The first part through Slovenia, however, did not sound that much fun so I decided to spend a week instead wandering through the Triglav National Park. Having skirted the…
A previous article on this (see here) created a significant level of interest and useful feedback, including from BBC Rado Scotland Drivetime and Radio 4 researchers. The message from the post above was that the pinewoods will grow back. The recovery may not be uniform, and there may well be areas of contraction or wider…
I was prompted to start Parkswatchscotland as a means of combatting the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s proposals to create camping byelaws. Having been involved, as President of the Mountaineering Scotland, in negotiating the agreement which was eventually enshrined in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 I believed there other ways to…
This very short post is concerned with pinewood recovery after wildfire, and based around a 10 minute video shot in the Forest of Birse on Deeside, 23 years after a big fire there in 2003. The video can be found viewed here. The context is the big fires taking place at Glenmore Forest and Abernethy…
A month before large areas in Strath Nethy and Glenmore were consumed by fire, I went for a short walk to have a look at part of the Caledonian pinewood around Glen Brown which also lies within the Cairngorms National Park. This fragment of Caledonian pinewood is located on the Dorback Estate, which was purchased…
UPDATE 25/07/2026 08.30 This blog was written on Thursday 23rd July, when fire flare ups were first being reported. Police Scotland declared a major incident on the evening of the 24th, with residents of Nethybridge evacuated as a precaution. The current extent of the fire is unclear. There is (currently) no public access to the Glenmore…
Walking back from Cook’s Cairn and Corryhabbie Hill in mid-June, I spotted shoeless hoof prints in Glen Suie and then a tepee and two horses in a field by the nearby estate bothy. I went over to have a look and got chatting to a woman minding the camp. She was with two companions and…
[NB This post was updated and corrected at 18.50 on 19th July. I wrongly reported the local resident as having seen smoke at 11am on Weds 15th about 45 mins before the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service were alerted to the fire when he had seen smoke in that area the day before. It was…
While efforts to contain the Glen More wildfire continue (see here) and have had some impact, it now appears likely only rain will extinguish it. In the last year the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) has approved fire byelaws, intended to reduce the likelihood of wildfires happening, and what was described as a ‘pioneering’ Integrated…
On 2nd July the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) announced (see here) a 12 week public consultation on the camping byelaws which legally require to be reviewed every ten years. Six days later they announced (see here) that all the permit and camping places that had been created to enable the public to…
“This region represents every wild aspect of the Central Highland scene – wooded lochs, strong rivers, high flat-topped mountains with rock corries deeply inset, wide sweeps of grass rather than the heather of the Cairngorms, peat-hag and bog, broad bealachs and sharp ravines, and good tracks.” So wrote Bill Murray, in his 1962 Highland Landscape,…
This short piece is very much a supplementary to my article ‘The Hidden Horrors of Hydro’ featured here on 23rd of August 2018 and of course the catalyst was the more recent (3rdJuly) article on pumped storage in Scotland by Dave Morris (see here). I was minded to do so because the negative profundity of pumped storage…
At the end of June I went for a walk over Conic Hill, starting from Milton of Buchanan and then back along the main road from Balmaha. The first part of the route, which I have followed several times before, takes the West Highland Way through the western edge of Garadhban forest, owned by Scottish…
Following my post on the Loch Lomond South Community Development Trust (LLSCDT)’s registration of interest in Scottish Enterprise’s land at Balloch (see here), their accounts were published on 6th July by Companies House (see here). This was the day before the deadline and these were first accounts to appear since the company was incorporated on…
They don’t want you to know – the Caledonian Pinewood remnant in Glen Falloch is now at serious risk
Yesterday, I discovered by accident when looking through Scottish Forestry (SF)’s register of woodland creation and felling permissions (see here) that a public consultation on native woodland restoration proposals for the Glenfalloch Estate opened on 23rd June. While SF’s website now provides a tab allowing the public to comment on grant applications, it provides little…
Just before she resigned as First Minister in March 2023 Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Government pushed through the Scottish Parliament what were described as “radical” changes in planning policy. This included giving the green light to any renewable developments, of whatever scale, that would help to meet UK renewable energy targets, emphasising that Scotland’s 42 Wild…
After the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) had effectively excluded the local community from the planning process which led to Flamingo Land (see here and here), a Community Development Trust (CDT) provided an alternative means for people in Balloch to have a say over the future of the land in the village. By setting up…
A couple of weeks ago Dave Morris and myself met with Mike Gifford, the Chief Executive, and two of the new directors of Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) at their invitation. Among the subjects we discussed were the proposed mountain coaster, which CMSL has called a toboggan run, but in fact has nothing to do…