Scotland

Scotland’s first national park - The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park - only came into being in 2002. The Trossach is a small part with The Queen Elizabeth Forest Park (created in 1953) to celebrate the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1st of Scotland). In the 1940’s much of Scotland was virtually treeless mainly because in the highlands was sheep pastures or managed for grouse moors. Forests as such were rather scattered remnants of the native Caledonian pine and birch and oak woodlands and a few areas with realtively extensive plantations stocked mostly with exotic spruce, pine, douglas fir and larch introduced in the early 19th century. Nowadays, while coming in to a landing at Glasgow airport one sees great swaths of black forest with sharp edges. Not to put too fine a point on it, many Scot’s describe them as muckle scarts on the landscape; so much so, that the muckle scarts have generated a whole new complaints industry all their own. It is a brave soul that gets entwined in the often vitriolic landscape politics in Scotland. So this website will stick to the benign reminiscence of a former forestry worker who has witnessed first-hand the remarkable evolution in landscape changes of Scotland; to which is added a little history of his familiar glens.