Loch Leven Heritage Trail

After taking the kids to see Lochleven Castle a few week ago I decided to go back last week to walk the full Heritage Trail which is a loop around the perimeter of the Loch – just under 20km in total. This time I took one of the dogs (Sam, on the basis that I thought he would be up for it whereas Eddie would end up plodding around and looking like a badly animated fossil from a Ray Harryhausen Movie).

The Heritage Trail is, for the most point, level and consists of a well maintained path going through a variety of farmland, woodland and the RSPB nature reserve. Some of it is fenced off but it is worth keeping the dog close at hand, not least because of his habit of trying to get run over by cyclists, but also because there is some free roaming wildlife – generally he has a thing for squirrels but there were some deer floating around as well. Obviously, through the bird sanctuary he was on a very short lead.

The walk itself is very well signposted with stone milestones every so often (although marked in Kilometres so does that make them metrestones?)

The benches are also a bit of fun with stanzas of Scots poetry ranging from the romantic to the gruesome carved into them

The view from the North of the Loch includes St Surf’s Island which once housed a monastery. The remains of this can still be seen but the island now forms part of the nature reserve and access is limited.

I did rather like this stone sculpture at an RSPB viewing point.

The only disappointment is that I didn’t see too many birds apart from this field full of geese.

The walk itself is almost the same as the Wirral Way which I did a couple of years ago. It also has the same effect that the last half hour or so becomes a bit of a plod back to the car park. Oh well, have whippet will travel.