Clune Plantation

It is unusual to see a tarmac path with such a snakey profile. This is the most pronounced example I came across on a short walk at the West end of Lochore Meadows Country Park. It looks like they have just laid the tarmac on top of a former mud path. The country park sits on the site of a former mining area and usually the paths in these sites follow the routes of old railway or tram lines; this is far more eye-catching. This country park, of which Scotland has 40, has the unusual distinction of being part of a larger regional park. Scotland has just three regional parks and this one - Lomond Hills Regional Park - is split into two discontiguous parts.

This is a strange river, judging by the map. It is shown as beginning in marshland just a few hundred yards West of here. It is not shown as a normal headwater though; it is shown as already being quite wide and has its name right from its start. It then flows into a medium-sized pond, before reaching this short stretch, after which it reaches Loch Ore, which is basically a flooded collapsed former mine. It emerges from the other side of the loch as a thin blue line, then eventually widens again. After a few miles it reaches the River Leven, which shortly afterwards flows into the North Sea. The picture was taken from a footbridge on the edge of Lochore Meadows Country Park.

This is the last - or possibly first, though I imagine the two cyclists I saw negotiating it with ease were travelling in their particular direction for obvious reasons - feature in one of a few small sections of Lochore Meadows Country Park set aside for mountain biking. This ramp thing sits on a trail called the 'Skills Loop'. This Country Park is by far the busiest and best put together I have come across in Scotland so far, though I have only visited a handful of the 40 there are. Country Parks are designated as such by the local council (or councils if they straddle authority boundaries, though I have no idea whether this straddling occurs in any of them) and are non-statutory designations. This means that it is the council who decide what is allowed to go on in them, and what bye-laws they want to bring in to help with their operation. As is always the case with these things however, how much overall autonomy the local authorities have is a grey area. Whilst it is supposedly up to the councils to decide whether there is a need for them or not, considering that the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967 goes so far as to give local authorities the power to carry out compulsory land purchases it seems likely that if a council managing an area the size of Fife, with so many areas of high population density, deemed such freely accessible recreational areas unnecessary they would fall foul of some higher governmental policies. Next up from a Country Park is a Regional Park. These are far larger, and contain a far higher proportion of private land, and a far higher number of residential properties and business properties/operations. Whilst within a Country Park people can pretty much wander around wherever they like and do as they please, a Regional Park's remit is essentially to give the public better access to private land for recreation than is afforded by Scotland's 'right to roam' legislation, generally by having waymarked routes and set-aside recreational areas within them. Scotland currently has three of these, one of which is Lomond Hills Regional Park. The odd thing about the Lomond Hills one is that it is for some reason split into two sections. Futhermore, one of these contains, in its entirety, Lochore Meadows Country Park.

A faint path - just visible in the picture - leads from the West of the main track that goes round Loch Ore to this hill, but it doesn't rejoin the track to the East. Since I approached the hill from the East, via another small stoney hillock, I'm not sure where it ends up, but it's surprising that curiosity hasn't beaten a path to the top from the other direction, considering the amount of paths there are leading off from the main track to other obscure places. This 118 metre hill - not much higher than the loch - along with the nearby small plantation, takes its name from an old farm that used sit just East of the summit. How the farm got its name though is unclear. Right now, due to a week-long hot spell and low rainfall over recent months, Scotland resembles Spain. There are very few green fields left around here.

Apart from a couple of low sections of the outer wall, these four blocks are all that remain of Lochore Castle. All the blocks except the far-right one have been bolstered by brick supports at some point within their structure. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but the only one of these old corner pillars that appears not to have had any major remedial work is the one that looks like it is most likely to fall over! These castle remains sit close to the edge, and just off one of the approach roads to Lochore Meadows Country Park. The decent sized loch, although pretty much man-made as a result of mining subsidence, looks like a natural water body that has been around forever. On the other hand, this old castle, which you would assume - had you not read the noticeboards around it - had always been on land, was in fact once in the middle of a small loch. Older Geograph pictures show a scruffy wooden fence around this site, and most of them give the impression of a fairly easy walk to the site once the fence has been crossed. Today, in reverse, there is no fence but there is extremely high vegetation between the path that encircles the castle and the castle itself. The easiest way up (discovered on my return) is a faint path just to the right of a rather grand memorial plaque for a recently deceased local historian.

Where it enters Loch Ore.

Looking upstream from the point where it enters Loch Ore.

On the footpath which follows the shoreline of Loch Ore.

Cocoons made by some insect unidentified beside the footpath which follows the shoreline of Loch Ore.

On the footpath which follows the shoreline of Loch Ore.

Alongside a well-wooded island.

Within the Lochore Meadows Country Park. The signs indicate a route of the Kingdom of Fife Millennium Cycleways.

To the south of Loch Ore.

Within the Lochore Meadows Country Park. Showing two of the islands in the loch. Benarty Hill NT1597 beyond.

Within the Lochore Meadows Country Park. Looking across one of the islands towards the visitor centre.

On the footpath which follows the shoreline of Loch Ore.

Within the Lochore Meadows Country Park.

On the footpath which follows the shoreline of Loch Ore.