Sunday 30th October 2023
Walk Tick Points:
- Parking: Yes, dedicated free car park
- Poo bin: Yes – opposite car park, next to entrance
- Terrain: Woodland path track, flat but parts impassable due to gorse
- Walk length: 5.34miles // 2hrs & 4mins
- Score: 4/10 – First path was lovely, but two thirds of the walk was impassable due to the gorse
As more strong winds and heavy rain was forecast, we’d intended to walk the two loops shown in red (marked footpaths) in the image below.
As Elodie had done so well the day before, we left her at home and headed out with Shadow and Osric – looking back, it’s a good job we did leave her behind.
This was another brand new walk for us. Still sticking to marked public footpaths and loving the autumnal colours in the trees at the moment, we wanted another woodland walk. With a car park clearly marked on Google maps, it was easy to find on Ferry Road, just past the golf club and caravan park.
The Loch Fleet Nature Reserve is managed by Scottish Natural Heritage. It’s a tidal basin surrounded by dunes, saltmarshes and pine woods. The information boards explain the variety of flora and fauna often seen throughout the year. Including ospreys, otters and seals.
We started off walking along the main tracked path, looking up at the tall pines doing some serious swaying in the wind.
After crossing a bridge, we took the footpath off to the right (not through the gate) but soon realised we made a mistake. The path had been very recently cut back and was carpeted with gorse. This doesn’t usually bother our dogs, being an Australian Shepherd and a Husky, they have thick double coats and very hardy paws. But we noticed they were starting to hop and skip a lot and then Osric started coming to a complete stop and holding his paw up waiting for me to remove bits of gorse that had got stuck in his pads.
Hoping it might clear up soon we persevered. Once we reached the point the clearing had stopped, the gorse that hadn’t been cut back yet was so thick, it was covering most the path. By this point, the boys didn’t care, they were happy to shove their way through so long as it wasn’t strewn all over the ground cutting their paws. Unfortunately, walking trousers or not, our legs were being turned into pin cushions. By the time we’d completed the first loop, we decided that ‘public footpath’ or not, it clearly wasn’t accessible so we started walking back towards to car.
When we got to the gate we turned right at, we decided to explore the path a short way. It was clearly a popular walking spot, we’d clearly taken an unpassable path so maybe this was the route we should have taken. We only dismissed it originally as it went along the waters edge and parts looked very submerged.
Not longer fighting our way through a wall of gorse, this part of the walk was much more pleasant.
Passing a house, we followed the path along. Every now and then, the trees would clear and we’d be offered glimpses over Loch Fleet and towards the tip of Littleferry. As it came out near the second loop we hadn’t walked down and we knew how impassable the first loop had been, we decided to turn around and head back to the car after about 20 mins. If we do this walk again, we’ll definitely head left through the gate next time.
Every now and then we came across a painted rock. Whilst we see lots of these little rocks out and about, these ones were amazing, all looked to be characters from children’s books (I think).
I should have been a perfect walk, very quiet and amazing scenery. It’s just a shame so much was either painful to us or the dogs. All in all, we walked 5.3miles and the whole walk took us just over two hours. I think next time we’ll explore the path on the right going up the coast.
My Highland Haven 