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BULLDOZED TRACKS
Tell us which you think is Scotland's worst example?
Bulldozed tracks always figure as one of the most hated intrusions into wild land, whether they cut through a remote glen or across an open hillside. They have often ruined existing paths, are sometimes badly engineered and are even more hideous at close quarters than from a distance. We'd like to know which ones our members would pick out as the worst examples. Please let us know.
Contact Alistair Cant, our Co-ordinator, e-mailing enquiries at-sign swlg.org.uk.

Scottish Wild Land Group

Wild Land News no 64, Autumn 2005

Tracks in Glens Article

David Jarman

'Find us somewhere wild and remote, but this side of Glencoe' came the remit for a short spring weekend with a dubious forecast. This seemed a tall order, until Glen Kinglass came to mind - long admired on the map as a penetrating deep into the mountains between Loch Etive and Loch Tulla, never yet visited nor even heard report of. We could bike in from Taynuilt, camp in the lower glen, and tackle the airy southern approaches to Ben Starav - including the elusive Top of Meall Cruaidh, usually missed because it is out on a limb from the regular circuit.

Once beyond the gloomy forestry, the way in along Loch Etive is magnificent, the eye always led towards Bidean and the Buachailles at its head, framed by the great trench separating Trilleachan and Starav. The unsurfaced private road serves permanent habitations at each side-glen foot - Noe, Liever, Kinglass - and is well-made, if a taxing switch-back for laden cyclists. We can have little quibble with this road, despite the considerable visual intrusion of successive engineering upgrades - better this than a tarmac public road attracting scores of cars into the more secluded reaches of the loch.

Glen Kinglass is much the longest of these side valleys, and the only one to break through the mountains, yet its entrance is so inconspicuous that it could almost be passed unnoticed. My battered 20-year-old map shows a vehicular track up it, serving one cottage (Narrachan, now a ruin) and then nothing until Glenkinglass Lodge, 10 km in from the loch and only seasonally occupied.

The Glen Kinglass ordeal

Now Richard and I had fondly imagined an unobtrusive old Victorian track meandering up the narrow glen floor, and indeed the first few hundred yards through old oakwoods promised just such an idyll. Sad to relate, all the rest of the way to the Lodge has recently been bulldozed to the crudest of standards, with excavated material dumped at random all along the sides, borrow pits dug in every pretty tulloch, ramps cut through the alder fringe to get gravel from the river. The (un)finished product is wide enough for the largest truck.

On any other weekend of the year, we might have been the only visitors to mourn this affront. Unwittingly, we had coincided with the coast-to-coast marathon. At least we had bikes - for the backpackers, what would once have been the finest stretch of walking the whole way was now just another endless dull trudge along an industrial-grade carriageway. And heading east, they probably missed the one kilometre of the old Victorian track to survive. You will find it following the river bank just upstream of Narrachan - a bit wet in places, but still a joy to grieve over.

The insensitivity of the owners or managers here is all the stranger since wild land values are generally being respected over the estate. The oakwoods in the lower glen are regenerating with the aid of exclusion fencing (or at least birch is reviving strongly); there are remnant Scots pines up every side gully, some now protected; conifer forestry is limited to a couple of shelter belts; the stalkers paths have not been made quaddable; one can forgive whims such as an artificial duckpond; one might wonder why a pole-mounted power line is needed all the way up the glen to the Lodge when run-of-river hydro is available on tap for almost free.

The once-wild innermost recesses of Kinglass

The Kinglass cuts back north and west at its head, capturing a former headwater of Glen Dochard, and almost encircling Beinn nan Aighenan. From the ridge, we were taken aback to see this grand, remote side valley filled for over a mile with a new deer-fenced plantation. Apparently, this is intended as native woodland, unlikely ever to yield commercial timber (so extension of the track to access it will hopefully never be required). In wildscape terms, to block off a long-treeless glen floor in this crudely intrusive way seems a poor use of public funds. We would urge FCS and the owners to let this block naturalise at a low density, removing the fencing as soon as just enough trees are above browse to achieve an open scatter. By contrast, the similar-sized block on the slopes above the Lodge fits much better into the glenscape, and with remnant trees around will probably establish more effectively.

Life becomes so much simpler above 2000 feet. One stops composing letters and articles railing against this ceaseless attrition of once amiable ways into our wild heartlands, and begins to immerse in the pristine. Except that the gale was such that maps stayed in sacks, and later I railed on realising we had bypassed that elusive Top, deceived into thinking that the much finer cone of Stob an Duine Ruaidh (910m) had been it.

Reading your way up Glen Mallie - six abreast

Hamish's Mountain Walk memorably mentions the track up Glen Mallie being so good that he was able to read his way up it for many miles. I had long hankered to visit this paragon among glen roads, and a visit to research the shaping of Gulvain made this my next bike-in after Starav.

Once again, the first mile along the shore of Loch Arkaig was sylvan and timeless. And then it was freshly re-engineered all the way to Glenmallie (ruin). Including an entirely new stretch over the moss to bypass Invermallie, requiring a new river bridge with stout concrete abutments. And again, a mile of the old track survives along the riverside, still a delight and just bikeable.

The difference from Glen Kinglass is that here the road has been constructed to a high standard, with hardly any eyesore pits and tips along the way, and with the banks regraded so that in time they will blend back into the hillside. Here, a contractor noted for his sympathetic eye and his skill with the machine - Murdo Campbell of Strontian - has been engaged, and the contrast is night and day.

Even so, one has to wonder whether a roadway wide enough for a platoon marching six abreast to read their way up the glen is really necessary. The ditch too is often outsize. The scale of roadway built with the natural economy of the pick and shovel has served to carry vehicles of landrover size and more for generations. It is all too easy with a JCB to build quickly and to build big - indeed it would probably take longer and cost more to build a less bulky track that fitted in better. We need mini-JCBs for glen roads.

Here in Glen Mallie (which the Lochiel factor pronounces Mailie), the good news is that the upgraded track is not a precursor for afforestation or some other development, it is simply to ensure safe access for deer-stalking (in a fraction of the time it used to take...). And there are no plans to extend it beyond the ruined house. It used to go another two miles to a walled stock enclosure, but is reverting to bog. This might even remain a trackless glen right through to Gleann Fionnlighe - except that a new track from Fassfern is currently being bulldozed though the 400m col and down into the pass, thus shrinking the area of remote country by yet another couple of miles.

Are there any trackless glens left?

Every other glen I have ventured up recently seems to have vehicular access further up it than the map shows. Majestic Caenlochan now has simple facilitation work for quads and cats right into the trough heads - while much to be preferred to fullscale roading, it still diminishes the wildness. Innocent, sun-sparkling Gleann Meadail in Knoydart (yes, I hit a cracking blue-sky April spell in there) has always had a path up it built to pony-and-trap width, and Kilchoan estate is restoring it pretty sensitively, but this is still allowing engined vehicles to penetrate for the first time.

My son and I went in round the back of Beinn Dearg the other day, from the Dirrie Mor. There is an old path (not on my map) for 2 km to lush alluvial pastures where two stone crofts once stood. It would be so easy for the estate to drive a road in here, and indeed on up Long Corrie for several km, in the interests of safer stalking access. Blessings on them for not doing so, long may it stay that way.

Our dependence on the mindset of estate owners for the survival of glens free of intrusive tracks - or indeed any vehicular access - is almost complete. Andrew Jefford captures this perceptively in 'Peat smoke and spirit' (a new book on Islay which exudes a rare understanding of landscape and wildness):

The highest parts of Islay belong to the Mactaggart family. Sandy Mactaggart says "one of the great things about the east coast is that it is empty but accessible. If you don't keep some empty spaces in the world what will remain?" . At one stage the Mactaggarts were going to put a road in to Proaig, the biggest bay in the Empty Quarter, and a grant had been obtained. "But my nephew John and I said this is one of the last places which is wild. You have to walk to get to it. It's not easy to get to, we shouldn't have a road in there". There is today no road, indeed barely a track, for no-one lives at Proaig anymore. The sheep are collected a couple of times a year.

Paving the glens with good intentions

Of course, tracks up glens don't need planning permission. Even if new ones did, upgrading old ones probably wouldn't. Quite why the public interest which demands Listed Building Consent for the most minor alterations to an ordinary house of mature years - such as putting in a new driveway 2 metres (not 2 kilometres) long - does not extend to wild places dear to countless hearts is one of life's little mysteries.

It is improbable that our new Parliament will dare to extend the scope of planning controls when all the pressures are to dismantle red tape obstacles to progress. There are always other routes to pursue though. How about SNH and the Landowners Federation getting together to produce some best practice advice on fitting tracks into glens unobtrusively, maybe hold a wee seminar for owners and agents, run a few workshops for designers and contractors? How about a bit more cross-compliance for all the public funds and tax breaks going into such estates, as agriculture and forestry subsidies come under single Land Management Contracts? There could even be a heading for remediation works. And more subtly, we should be encouraging the glossy magazines which estate owners and spouses read to reward best practice with prizes and (better still) illustrated features. The 4x4 convoy will look so much more authentic on an artfully minimal old road by a simple Victorian wooden bridge than on some heavy-haulage track.

Don Lindsay at FCS Perth kindly advised on the woodland planting scheme at Glen Kinglass; he draws attention to access tracks created by The Woodland Trust at Glendevon, where the road has been constructed as a cut-and-fill bench and stripped turf drawn back over the bank thus minimising both the landtake and the visual intrusion. Good to know it can be done.