Return to Loch Lunndaidh

Todays' walk took us up the forestry track from Drummuie into the open moorland which has recently been planted with, mainly, conifers - see earlier post here. The young men who did the job have been good about leaving the place tidy, as can be seen....

....by the pile of bags which contained all the young trees - each bag here is tightly packed with other bags.

While the planting has mainly been across the flat land on the floor of the strath, in places they planted up the hillside - look carefully at the paler area of bracken-covered hillside which has been planted, while the darker, heather-covered slopes have not.  There's good reason for this: the bracken has invaded land which the old farmstead improved as a field - see post here.

Passing through the gate in the top picture of this post used to be the moment, not a year ago, when we felt we were walking out into the glorious open scenery of the Highlands but now the landscape is divided up by fences. Fortunately, the Sutherland Estate is fairly good about putting pedestrian gates through these fences but one still walks with a sense of enclosure.

The reason for the fences is, of course, the red deer.  The new planting is protected by these deer fences so, although we did find deer tracks inside them, we now have to walk some distance before we come to land which is still freely roamed by these magnificent beasts.  We noticed how they seemed to leave their equivalent of calling cards along the fences.

Our walk ended, appropriately, at a fence. We stood for some time looking though it to Loch Lunndaidh listening to one thing which fences cannot enclose, the silence.