Traffic

Despite the heavy rain last night and the continuing drizzle of the morning, plans made recently were honoured.

A friend had suggested introducing me to a fairly new walk around Loch Leven in Fife as I was looking for some good places to take the family when they come up in August. So we duly set out with the two dogs, fleeces and waterproof clothing. The drive over to Fife was most enjoyable, despite the low cloud, as we drove through the picturesque Glen Devon (home to the well known Gleneagles golf course). The Loch Leven Heritage Trail was opened in 2010 and consists of 12.5km of level walking around the west and north of the loch amongst varied woods and marshlands, with access to a couple of excellent cafes along the way.

All along the pathway we came across an abundance of wild flowers, grasses, nettles and reeds and as we walked we were literally bombarded by swallows. They were continually soaring and swooping as they gathered up the myriad of small insects in the air above us, their indigo backs contrasting sharply with the neighbouring fields of oil seed rape. We didn't walk the whole trail but after two hours, admittedly stopping for photos and letting the dogs have a swim, we were ready to enjoy a late lunch at an excellent farmshop/cafe before returning the same way back to the car. As you can see from this blip the pathway is brilliant in that it can be used by everyone and even on this rather cool, damp day it was busy. It does my heart good to see how many trails like these are opening up all over the place, encouraging people to go out and about to appreciate the fabulous countryside about us. We kept both Cara and Bruce on long leashes as it is a Natural Reserve and not a place for them to go charging about disturbing nesting birds and they were exceptionally well behaved. My friend (providing a nice splash of red here) was in charge of Cara as she is soon going to collect her own retriever puppy and was keen to get her hand in!

I took a number of photos, including one of a swan with five cygnets out on the choppy loch, but the greyness of the day made them a bit lack lustre and there will be more opportunities to blip this area.

It was a really lovely day out and I will be back!