The modern road from Golspie south to Littleferry passes through woodland. Balblair Wood, on the west side, is mixed planting, some of it quite old, while the woodland between the road and the beach is coniferous.
One of the pleasures of moving to a new place is its exploration. Having walked through Balblair Wood - post
here - the area to the east was next. A path led into it from the Balblair car park but this quickly petered out....
....though the walking remained relatively easy.
As well as exploring, we hoped to have a sighting of the Scottish crossbills which live in this woodland and which should be actively nest-building, but the wood was silent, the only bird making itself visible being a robin.
This is taken from the 1874 OS map which shows that the land at that time was rough grazing with scattered trees. By the time the area was re-surveyed in 1904 the pines had been planted, so they are just over a hundred years old.
In several places distinct, lichen-covered banks ran parallel to the beach, this one the largest and the only one which hadn't been planted - it appears to be marked in the 1874 map. These may be old storm-beaches left behind as deposition moved the coastline eastwards.
The far side of the wood is fenced but fortunately the fence is in poor condition so we soon found a place where we could cross it, returning to Golspie along the beach.
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