Another Kind of Wild Life

Today I decided to try another attempt at using my Raspberry Pi while out and about. I’m going back up to Scotland in less than a week and I’m currently sitting in a very noisy bar. This is not necessarily the wild life I am going to be posting about on this blog but it has to be said that I’m often more ill at ease around the human animal than I am when I’m in the wilds. Perhaps this is because there aren’t really any seriously threatening beasts in the UK.

Anyway, the idea of returning to Glengarry has been on my mind a lot recently. I just finished my job at Oxford Uni and I’ve got a bit of time to think of what to do next. I got myself a 20km by 20km map of Glengarry similar to the one I got before I left for Knoydart. I spent quite a while checking out the Land Register of Scotland finding the large estates in the area and then marking their boundaries on the map. I now have a pretty good idea of the extent of these estates and where there is a lack of records in the land registry. There may be some records relating to them in the Register of Sasines however.

I haven’t done it yet but I want to check the BSBI for botanical records in the area as well. A 20km by 20km area covers 400 hectads and this would be enough to keep any botanist going for a while even if it wasn’t one of the most inaccessible areas with perhaps the harshest terrain in the UK.

Forest Lands?

In Glengarry there are also extensive Forestry and Land Scotland owned areas. However when I walked through Glengarry I found mostly a clearfelled ecological disaster. The area is also the focus of a new Hydroelectric project and this could also prove to be detrimental to nature locally. As much as I appreciate the effort to free our economy from non-renewable energy I would have been more in favour of a less impactful approach which will cause a lot of geological changes to the landscape.

Although most of the results of the hydro project will be felt in the neighbouring Great Glen on the banks of Loch Lochy there are clearly infrastructure developments in Glengarry like the upgraded forest roads and helicopter landing areas. When I was asked by staff from the John Muir Trust about the places I saw on my Journey for Wildness that seemed the most threatened, Glengarry was my immediate response. However it is sadly already a horribly degraded place. And perhaps this is why I feel so drawn to go there to try and make it right.

Watch this space!