Sometimes all you need to do is find the right path and follow it. This is about my journey.  Just a few steps up a magical  Scottish glen.  It’s a journey you can take. Come with me as I explore the wild heart of Scotland. Travel through the ancient forest and witness it’s rebirth. The trees are coming back and with them the promise of greater things as the long dead animals return.

My journey began here at this simple bothy.  By bothy standards Ruigh Aiteachain is pretty luxurious. It has been renovated to an exceptionally high standard. It has not one but two toilets, something unheard of in the Bothy culture. In the two rooms that you can use to sit in and cook your meals both have stoves and have been renovated to a very high standard.  The day I went there was plenty of wood supplied and someone had even lit the fire when I got there.  The bothy is maintained by the Mountain Bothies Association and was renovated by the Glen Feshie estate.

The walk begins on a broad path that climbs slowly toward the heart of the Cairngorm  mountains. At first the walk winds its way through remnants of the old Caledonian pine forest. You pass by huge twisted trees their features showing how hard the battle for survival has been in this high Highland Glen. The branches are twisted and their bark is riven by the marks of thousands of Highland storms.

Find out more about Glen Feshie on Walk Highlands

The great thing about this Glen is that alongside the old twisted trees there is new growth springing from the ground. This is only possible because the number of deer that are grazing in the area has been drastically reduced. In many areas in the Highlands, forest consist of only mature trees with the areas beneath their branches cleared by hungry teeth. In effect this means that these forests are doomed because once the old trees die there will be nothing to replace them.

I can’t help thinking as I walk along this beautiful Glen that the next stage here surely should be the release of Beavers. Higher up the Glen the environment is perfect for them as the Glen narrows and becomes full of small trees that would make excellent food and dam making materials for Beavers. This would help these industrious animals create areas of wetland that could only help the environment in Glen Feshie. This could create vast changes in the area which would also prevent flooding lower down in the Spey Valley.

Why not go and see this wonderful glen for yourself.  Find out what Scotland could be like if we were free of landowners who vastly over populate our hills to create huge herds of deer for hunting.  It’s time that the people of Scotland were given back control of the land and a sensible policy for its management was put in place. Glen Feshie has shown the way.  Here you can see the first steps in creating a new, diverse environment with room for all our creatures. Scotland has the space to do this.  This is our land, it is the place we come from, and it is our wealth and our right.  Let’s take it back.