OUT AND ABOUT WITH RALPH: Shirk the responsibility of landownership and get on your bike!
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The Dunbeath estate is on the market for an asking price of over £25 million – but there are cheaper ways to enjoy the Caithness countryside
Would you buy the Dunbeath estate if you could spare 25 million? It sounds fantastic to own a magnificent castle and gardens, with a salmon river and a huge area of unspoilt moorland.
But then the first electricity bill comes in, you can’t find a good gardener, the river is dry and a wildfire threatens your land… No. All you are buying is responsibility.
Why would anyone be a landowner? I know from experience that even a tiny bit of woodland entails a huge amount of work!
Our wonderful Scottish access laws allow us all freedom of access by foot, bike or horse to virtually all private land, except around dwellings. All you are required to do is behave sensibly and responsibly, and you can then enjoy all of our magnificent countryside whilst leaving worries about the track that’s washed away or the broken deer fence to the landowner.
It wasn’t always this way, and many estates did their best to keep people out. I always ignored them and went anyway.
Ever since moving to Caithness nearly 50 years ago, the Shurrery estate has been one of my favourite places, an area which includes the finest loch in the county and some lovely remote glens.
In my fitter days I would often do long cross-country runs around the estate tracks and lochs.
You are entitled to drive a car as far as Shurrery Loch, but it would be shame to do that at the moment. The verges along the road are one of the best wildflower meadows in the county, thick with orchids, yellow rattle, white marguerite daisies and yellow catsear. Walk or cycle slowly!
One early spring day I’d left the car by the loch and enjoyed a long jog of about 16 miles. I returned to find the gamekeeper waiting for me, his truck parked so as to block the car.
Knowing I’d done nothing wrong, I explained I’d run round most of his estate, over Beinn nam Bad, out past Loch Tuim Ghlais and Loch Torr na Ceardaich, down the long quiet Glen Urlan to Loch Caluim then back round the end of Shurrery Loch.
You can still do it now (but please avoid the stag stalking season!). He had no choice but to let me go.
The run out to Loch Tuim Ghlais and back was always a good training route for the Highland Cross, I would even do it in an evening after cycling to work and back – I was fit in those days!
It has always been possible to cycle but the rutted and stony track was not much fun on a road bike. The track has improved, and so have bikes, so it now makes an enjoyable and easy ride.
I left home early on a fine June morning and cycled out to Shurrery, enjoying the wildflower verges. Seven miles of stony track follows, climbing high round the side of Beinn nam Bad Beag with magnificent views out across the Caithness flows.
I detoured to Loch Scye, also a very fine loch with boathouse and sandy beach, then carried on round the side of the next hill to where an old stables building, six miles out, stands as it did 50 years ago, just a bit more decrepit.
The track down to the loch used to be deeply rutted but has recently been improved, many thanks to the landowner, and now gives an easy coast down to the loch shore.
This is certainly the finest loch in the county, miles from anywhere, completely peaceful with long curving sandy beaches. Walk along the shore and you have a view with no sign at all of humanity, hidden are all the plantations and turbines, just loch and quiet rolling moorland looking exactly as it will have looked for 2000 years. Like an uninhabited island, it is a place I always regret having to leave.
But there are always the thorns, the temperature had risen and so had the clegs. At least on a bike you can get away from them, on foot it does detract from the peace when 20 or so attack at once.
The track gradually takes you back to the modern world, masts and wind turbines appear, then the estate woodland and the tarred road. But the Caithness countryside still lay quiet in the morning sun.
No, you don’t need 25 million, you don’t even need one pound. Anyone can go for a walk on any of our estates, or a cycle if you have a bike, while leaving the cares of upkeep to the owners!
