4 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
Ian Carter had lived in Norfolk and then Devon for a while. Both were nice places to live, but they didn’t feel wild enough for Carter. This nagging feeling was not helped by trips to the West of Scotland; it is a land that is still shaped by humans, but it felt so much wilder than Devon. It took half an hour of mooching around the garden to make the inevitable decision, they were going to have to move to the west of Scotland and specifically Galloway.
They are fortunate to find a house that meets their requirements and constraints. Within a few minutes’ walk from the house, he can feel properly in a wild space. If he walks for 45 minutes, there is no sign of roads and cars and not a hint of a man-made sound. This is not a guidebook of the region, more of a story of the first months there and the discoveries that he makes.
After unpacking and settling in, he discovers that one of his favourite authors, Derek Ratcliffe, had written a book, Galloway and the Borders, and he didn’t have a copy. This omission was quickly rectified. As Carter read his new book, he learnt of Ratcliff’s passion for the uplands of the region and the pleasure he got from observing the wildlife, a similar theme to his other books.
Carter roams widely from his home, a luxury afforded to him by the progressive laws in Scotland on access to the countryside. A frequent route covered is over the burn and then heading straight up hill. The wildlife that he ends up seeing tends to wander all over the place rather than sticking just to one particular place. He dips into the National Atlas of Birds published in 1976, and it is a bleak reminder of scarce gains and massive losses that have happened in the past four decades.
Carter devotes a whole chapter to the red squirrel. He has six regular visitors to his garden, and he has learnt to recognise them. They are clinging on there, but the threat of the grey squirrels and the illness they can pass on is never far away.
Even though finding the wild here is easier than in Devon, it is still not a true wilderness. That has long gone from this country, with almost every square metre having been affected by humans at some point. It is rural, and there are lots of farms around, and they squeeze as much as they can from the land. The modern farm vehicles are huge so they can reach all parts of the fields nowadays, and there are small areas that are left untouched.
The sika plantations are cool, dark and slightly oppressive places. Carter considers them an alien eyesore on the uplands of Galloway. That said, he does recommend visiting one, though, for the assault on the senses that you get. Above these areas are places that couldn’t be planted, so they have been rewilding themselves. Carter likes this part of the landscape, though he keeps a careful eye out for adders when scrambling up.
He takes a longer trip up into the hills with an overnight stay. He is aiming to look for glow worms, but he wants to take time to look at the wider landscape and visit an ancient hillfort. It gives him time to consider the ongoing debate on what is or isn’t an alien species. He mentions The New Wild by Fred Pearce, which, if you haven’t read it, is an excellent book.
It takes him 90 minutes to walk from his home to the cliffs. These face the Atlantic and suffer the wrath of the storms that roll in each year. It is also a haven for seabirds that nest on the cliffs and fly out to the open ocean to feed. He enjoys spending time there watching them returning to feed their chicks. Just off the coast is Heston Island, and accessible when the tide is low. He spends a night there and, as well as the numerous seabirds, sees otters and porpoises.
He shares his new home with two species of bats, and their garden is host to red squirrels, badgers and pine martens and lots of different species of birds. Lots of small birds bring in the raptors, and he frequently sees sparrow hawks and peregrines passing by.
The area that he has chosen to live in has a little bit of everything. The hills in the distance are not quite mountains, but they feel like it after climbing them. Up there, you used to be able to see eagles, but they were harried and persecuted to the point of extinction in the white-tailed eagles case. Thanks to reintroductions and public opinion taking a really dim view of illegal killings of these magnificent birds, they are making a comeback.
The drystone walls here are hundreds of years old, and they have developed their own ecosystem. They are not as old as the scrap of woodland nearby. This is a remnant of temperate rain forest left over from the larger woods that cover the area.
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