Scotland at midsummer is the most beautiful place on Earth.
I can testify to that having just been on a hill-walking trip to Loch Quoich in the West Highlands, to Selkirk in the Borders for the Common Riding and to the sea cliffs at St Abb’s Head. Scotland has everything: mountains, moors, rolling hills, lochs, rivers, beaches and changing weather. Every day there is a different sky, and a freshness to every view.
Of course, we have ugly places too – cities spoilt by modern architecture, small towns left to rot, housing estates with no centres and roadside verges strewn with litter. But there is enough countryside to give the overall picture of a green and pleasant land.
The summer solstice is a time to consider how we are looking after our countryside. The latest “State of Nature” report from the Scottish Government found an average 15 per cent fall in the number of species over the last 30 years. Seabird numbers are down by a half. Curlews, lapwings, swifts have declined by an average of 60 per cent. Months are down 90 per cent.
It lists the reasons for this loss of biodiversity: intensive agriculture, monoculture forestry, over-grazing, over-fishing, climate change, pollution, non-native species and disease. Some action has been taken on all these issues but clearly it’s not enough.
In my three-day climbing trip to Loch Quoich for example, we saw little wildlife: one ptarmigan, one mountain hare, two grouse, a few meadow pipits, and two herds of deer. The mountain landscape was magnificent, but it lacked life. Interestingly, the glen road to the hydro-dam built in the 1950s is being resurfaced in preparation for a new pumped storage scheme and a new line of electric pylons. So some moves are being made to tackle the problem of climate change.
At St Abb’s Head, on the Berwickshire coast, the kittiwakes and razorbills were swirling around the cliff face and screaming as they have always done. But their numbers have fallen by 70 per cent since 1990, largely because climate change has led to a fall in the number of sand eels they feed on. Again there are plans to reduce climate change with the building of the Berwick Bank windfarm offshore. (Incidentally, I find it hard to believe the RSPB’s predication that thousands of birds will be killed by flying into the slow-turning wind blades.)
My trip to the Common Riding at Selkirk took me into the green hills of the Borders and into the world of farming and forestry. On a breezy meadow, we watched the horse-racing and enjoyed the wonderful views of neat sheep fields and stone farmsteads. But farming has its own climate change problems and we are not paying enough for our food to help farmers tackle them.
For those who have never been to a Borders Common Riding, I would recommend they go this weekend to the Peebles Beltane Festival, or the Galashiels Braws Lads Gathering on 27 June or any of the other festivals in Jedburgh, Duns, Kelso, Langholm and Lauder over the summer. The Selkirk Common Riding involves a troop of horses riding round the boundaries of the town before coming into the central square for a flag casting ceremony.
It commemorates the arrival in the town in 1513 of solder Fletcher, the only local man to survive the Battle of Flodden. He brought with him an English flag and “cast” it to the ground in memory of all those who died with King James IV that day.
And the struggle with our history and our countryside continues. These are long term issues which give perspective to our everyday pre-occupations with by-elections and World Cups and the current plague of social media.
