How accessible is the countryside around Perth?

Methven circular via Tippermallo farm

How many are keen on walks on muddy tracks, along open windswept fields, especially on a sleety February afternoon in Scotland?  I take pains to avoid this sort of walk and yet here I was.  Why?  Because I couldn't get in to the woods.  This is a post about land access.

I had spent 45 minutes driving in the countryside trying to find a place to pull in and explore some of the less explored woods near me.  I enjoy the shelter, the diversity, the peace of the woods.  Woodland paths if not too popular, are often less icy and less waterlogged than on treeless land.   I go to the plaeces few people do, because of my dog.  To walk with a dog never off a lead I think is cruel and against my religion. Max has a low-key profile in my photos, always there, standing alert and waiting, or snuffling about ahead or just out of shot.  But he defines where I go, to quiet places, because he is inclined to bark at people which scares or annoys them.  If a cyclist arrives suddenly before I have time to leash the dog he will bark around them in an alarming though (to date, over a year) harmless way.  I am very grateful to the fearless and understanding cyclists who have, despite this, both stopped so that I can grab the dog and not taken umbrage at this interruption to their ride.  

The previous day, unable to face a proper walk in the rain and sleet I had taken him around the park, where there still a few people trekking homeward. Max was deeply occupied in sniffing the ground.   Along the path, I saw a dark figure,  bundled up against the weather, approaching.  I decided to leash the dog just in case.  As though through telepathy he raised his head, stared at the bundle, took a few paces towards the path and started barking.  A woman's voice began shrieking and crying, probably past the border into hysteria.  She batted the air as if to fend off an invisible assailant, mauling her at shoulder height.  The dog seemed as taken aback as I.  Equally bundled I lumbered towards them in kind of crashing run, the huge umbrella catching the wind.  Max leashed, I turned to the woman to apologise for the noise, but she was scuttling away still crying a bit and batting.  "Sorry", she said, plaintively, "I just...". 

"No, no....Sorry," I said, feeling  dreadful, adding, needlessly," He's just very noisy..."   We walked on, miserably in the rain as darkness gathered in the sodden, largely barren park.  "This is ridiculous," I thought.  "A dog on a lead in an empty park."  I let him off, forgetting we were near the swans, who, inevitably, he likes to challenge with barks.  The swans are entirely unperturbed and while I try to avoid these confrontations they no longer fill me with the panic of a potential battle that they used to.  I have realised swans can easily take care of themselves.  They stand their own ground and hiss back, confidently, from the water.  But it wasn't the swans.  Max had seen two big, leashed husky type dogs.  Their owner, another woman, was shouting at them manically to "Come on, come away" as though my small, single dog who was neither approaching nor barking, was liable to attack her two, very imposing animals.  Wondering if I'd missed some new twist in world events that had turned everyone rather odd, we moved away.  It's probably just winter, lockdown and rain.  But tomorrow, I thought, we'll have to go somewhere remote again & hang the weather.  Thank goodness it's not the 'Lockdown 1' rules for travel this time.

So that is why we were driving through the countryside again, looking for pull-ins around Drumbuich wood some eight miles from Perth.  They were hard to come by.  Drumbuich is part of a sizeable stretch of woodland south of the river Almond, incorporating the woods of Stottleburn, Druveigh, Drumbuich, Pickston, the woodland around Keillour, Gorthy wood and Murray's Hill wood. It runs from the west side of Perth from the woodland fringing the Almond around Almondbank, to Methven wood, all the way to Fowlis Wester, with some small gaps.  There is no formal parking for any of it west of Methven.   

Since 2003 in Scotland there is public right of access to most of our land and water with responsibilities set out both for the public and for land managers.  As you travel through it the countryside looks vast and open.  We have a national network of local "core paths" now, often signposted or waymarked with arrow markers. This does not mean though that you can, in reality, walk anything like most of the countryside.  Locked gates, barbed wire, fencing around forests, intimidating signs and a near-total lack of anywhere to park send a clear message to anyone looking to walk that all the land is private, really private, law or no law.   

So where you can you walk?  There are usually walks, often of just a few miles, around settlements, even small villages.  They often require some road walking.  Many 'core paths' are actually not countryside paths at all but in fact are on or next to country roads but also A roads such as the A93 and long stretches of the A94 north of Scone and around Coupar Angus. 

You can also walk from designated car parks beside well known beauty spots.   There are larger car parks at Kinclaven for the bluebell wood, some twelve miles away and at Glen Sherup (21 miles), for walkers.  Two car parks at the Hermitage (15 miles) at Dunkeld reflecting the latter's regional, indeed national, popularity.  

Near Perth we have a small car park at the Jubillee car park, for the woodland parks of Kinnoull and Deuchny and nearby the even smaller Quarry car park with room for just a few cars. These walks are ever more popular and since 2020, especially at weekends and holidays the Jubilee can be like the Marks and Spencer's car park in town, with drivers queueing in the middle of it for spaces.  It is not really possible to take the dog off-lead to Kinnoull at the weekends, there are just so many people. There is another fairly small and very popular car park for the short, accessible and buggy friendly walk at Quarrymill,  

St Magdalene's hill has a small car park but in icy conditions it is treacherous or inaccessible. Again the walks around St Magdalene's, being short and on quite accessible paths are very popular.  Moncreiffe hill is a large park though marred by the ever-present roar of the motorway.  It has two carparks, both icy and treacherous in winter.  I slithered and nearly crashed leaving the north side one one winter.  The approach to the southern one is long and badly potholed. The end of it is on a slope which again can be very icy.  All of these carparks are popular and as some of them become less accessible, those like the Jubilee, become even more overcrowded.  Bike, bus and rail access is poor, nationally, compared to Germany and the Netherlands.  Realistically, access to the countryside for many is by car, especially during the pandemic.  But seeing how overcrowded the car parks have been especially over 2020 and no doubt probably more so during the expected 2021 staycations, their size and number are inadequate to meet public demand.  And then there are the more solitary of us who just want a pull-in near a wood to avoid the crowds.  

So that's how we ended up parking outside the shop in Methven instead and following the core path sign past Tippermallo farm on a barren, depressing, mostly treeless walk.  There is actually a fetching beechwood copse on Methven's south eastern side, behind the rec.  It is small.